It probably is: it has just the right amount of ingrown festering obsessiveness. We’ve all heard of old earth creationism (creationists who agree the Earth is billions of years old, and make arguments about the “days” of the bible representing long ages) and young earth creationism (the bible is strictly and literally true, and the earth is only 6000 years old and was created in precisely 6 24-hour days). Here’s a new one called Biblical Reality:
This "Old Earth" brand of creationism puts forth the view that combines a seven 24-hr day week of original creation (Exodus 20:11), with a separate “six 12-hr days of revelation” given to Moses (Genesis 1:2 – 2:3). The pseudo discrepancy between the “sixth day” in Genesis chapter one and in chapter two is explained as chapter two being the beginning of modern mankind (Adam & Eve), and chapter one as being an earlier species of prehistoric mankind in an earlier restoration period, more than 60 million years ago.
Got that? There are two creation accounts in the bible, so he’s going to reconcile them by saying there were two literal creation events, each about a week long, separated by a 60 million year gap. So it’s a kind of hybrid YEC/OEC contrivance.
I don’t think we should worry about it too much. It probably has a following of one.
I always took the first creation event to mean that god screwed up and forgot to water everything, so the people died and he had to start over. Rookie mistake really.
I’ve heard something similar to this before, and it does smack of “gap theory” a bit. In fact I’ve heard a few people use a similar line or reasoning to try and explain away dinosaurs and fossils, with God fashioning them in some creative fit, determining that perhaps a Tyrannosaurus would not make a good pet for Adam & Eve only to cry “Do over!” and scrap the whole thing for a more recent creation. Overall it seems that it’s the type of argument made up by those who are unfamiliar with theology and science, so I wouldn’t expect for it to become a mainline idea, either.
Creation Week was 168 hours, in 4.6 Billion BC, according to the geologist.
We are the geologist. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
That’s kind of funny in a sad sort of way. As a child of religious parents and convinced at the time of the veracity of the Adam & Eve creation event, I tried to argue with a group of my grade three peers who insisted on our origins involving “cavemen”. I must have done a good job of confusing them for they then suggested a similar explanation: Cavemen came first through evolution and THEN God created Adam & Eve.
They weren’t sure what happened to the cavemen however and I proudly thought I’d shown them up.
That 2-stage creationism theory ought to be worthy of a Nobel Prize.
It’s not nearly as artful as the Talmudic explanation: first, God created a single, hermaphrodite being — “male and female he created them,” don’t ya know — which He then divided in twain to make Adam and his first wife, Lilith. But Lilith was uppity and independent, so she was booted from the Garden and went on to mother (parthanogenetically?) a whole brood of demon-children.
God then created a second wife for Adam, but He made the mistake of doing so while Adam was awake and watching. Adam saw his bride-to-be built from the bones outward, and he knew how under her skin she was blood and mucus and obscene glop. So, he rejected her, and she vanished into obscurity.
God then wised up and put Adam to sleep whilst He extracted a rib and made Adam’s third wife, who was tempted by the snake and ate the fruit, thereby causing her husband and herself to become more like God and therefore unworthy to stand in God’s presence (yeah. . .). Enter the Fall, pain, decay and death; Adam gives his third wife a name, Hayyah (Eve), as she is “the mother of all living” — probably trying to keep Lilith off his mind.
Of course, Neil Gaiman soaked up Rabbinic lore as a kid and grew up to write the story into The Sandman, making Eve another aspect of the Triple Goddess (Maiden-Mother-Crone), whose other aspects include the Fates, the Furies, the trio of Foxglove-Hazel-Thessaly and the trio of Thessaly-Lyta-Nuala.
For now.
So mankind was originally created just after the dinosaurs went extinct? And where did they live if the Garden of Eden wasn’t made until book 2, 60 million years later?
Huh… since it is well-established that the rotation of the earth is continually slowing, the geologist hive mind must have a glitch.
Actually, I’ve heard this kind of thing before, in my dead racists. The first creation account was God creating all the other races (you know, colored people), and the second one was God creating Adam and Eve–who, naturally, were white.
Wow, if you multiply 60 million years by 0.0001 you get 6000 years. I will call it the Creation Equalization Constant. At last, a solid arithmetical footing for creat…Intelligent Design Theory.
I will, of course, offer Dr. Meir…Meinhof…Mayer…uh, Dr. raging athiest as second author when I finally find a interweb tube upon which to publish.
I wonder if it hurts when a person pulls that much sh%t out of their ass?
Sixty million years ago. Aha! The first “people” were really decended from the dinosaurs. Intelligent reptiles. Apparently god wasn’t too happy with the result because he sent an asteroid crashing into the Yucatan and wiped them out along with their entire ecosystem. QED.
The second group of mammaliforms got off easy. He created them in his image, didn’t like the result, and so drowned all but 8 of them.
Wonder if the third time will be the charm? I really hope god is on a learning curve here. How many more catastrophes can the earth take everytime he screws up? Everyone correct your bibles now, the mystery has been solved.
Wikipedia has an article on the historical roots of this crap. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Adamite
Nicely done, Blake! One should always seize an opportunity to make a Sandman reference!
Here’s the first chapter of: “Moses Didn’t Write About Creation!”
http://hometown.aol.com/ephraim7/myhomepage/index.html
Scientific Reality – That which has been
discovered and analyzed to be of true
historical existence. That which has
been observed to be a real occurrence
or phenomena, whether or not it can
be explained.
Biblical Reality – The ordained marriage of
biblical truth (revelation) and
scientific reality. The correct
choreography of biblical, secular, and
pre-historical events that led to the
creation of our universe, and the
events that both have occurred in our
history and will occur in mankind’s
future. The correct and complete
exposition of the Bible.
“Outta Touch With” Reality –
The fantasy that I, Herman
Cummings spew im my book:
Moses Didn’t Write About Creation!”
This isn’t a new interpretation of Genesis. This is what they taught me 45+ years ago in the Conservative Baptist church I grew up in.
PJ, don’t snicker so fast. Jesus started out with a following of one!
Blake, wrong! Based on available evidence, Lilith ended up on Frasier, and don’t we know “all about eve?”…Anne Baxter R.I.P.
PZ, you’re wrong when you say, “I don’t think we should worry about it too much. It probably has a following of one.” This makes a lot of “sense” and it may be the new argument against the rationalists.
Those who want to believe just do so. As a matter of fact this new claim (or, Biblical reconsicilation) gives another reason to the uncritically-minded people to further support their beliefs.
I’m betting you a pint of beer that soon this argument will gain ground and supporters.
mackrelmint, that theory has already been proposed, in a more refined form, in “Science Made Stupid”, one of my favorite books once upon a time. It explains the evidence for “cavemen” as well as the lack of provision in the bible for wives for Cane, Abel, etc. In this grand synthesis, the sons of Adam & Eve married the cave women, and the rest is …. I wish I still had it to scan the graphic, the cavewomen looked like quite the hussies. :)
You know, even if you accept this ridiculous premise, even purely for the sake of argument, it still puts Adam and Eve as being created about 6,000 years ago.
Or, as Sam Harris likes to remind us, about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue.
legraf,
An abridged version of Science Made Stupid is available ontube.
Seems to me the obvious answer for a thinking theist is that Yahweh revealed creation to two, or more, people in a way that a semi-literate 10th century BCE yak herder fresh out of the wasteland might be able to comprehend. When the two traditions were compiled you get two slightly different accounts (as archaeological and linguistic research have indicated did, indeed, occur).
All of this creationist bullshit is an insult to their own God. It assumes that God is too stupid to use metaphor to explain high energy particle physics to bronze-age yahoos and that rather than do such a thing He created the world in a stupid way so that stupid people could comprehend it. It’s pathetic.
I remember Stephen Jay Gould discussing someones mid 19th century theory, which sounded pretty familiar to this too, in ‘I have landed’. Pre-adamite humans, that was it. A book was written in 1860 called ‘Pre-adamite man: The story of our old planet and its inhabitants. So it’s hardly a new idea (or a good one).
It’s not too different from Behe’s concept of creation, as far as we can tell. He basically says that there are lots of special creation events, one for each organism with irreducibly complex features.
Holy crap are conservatives stupid.
The Defender (in the comments) is a complete twit.
I wrote about this guy the other day myself. His notion is a mix of the old and the new. The seven days of Genesis 1 are the days of the revelation to Moses, not of the actual creation. (This is old stuff.) Each of the days however did come from a creation event. It seems Yahweh created living things no less than seven times; only day four is a fragment from the original creation event. (As far as I know, this is new.) At the end of each cycle all living things were destroyed and Yahweh started over. If I understand him correctly there were human beings during each of these geological ages; the earlier ones just weren’t descendants of Adam and Eve. He mentions a number of extinction events, among which he includes the Cambrian explosion.
Cummings accepts the age of the earth as being 4.6 billion years (or something like that) but claims that the rest of the universe must be younger. He rejects the idea that anything can be concluded from the speed of light, as the light from the objects must have been created at the same time as the objects, else they would have been no use here on earth.
His definition of the word “theory”: “A guess about the unknown, using scientific jargon.”
I’ve heard something similar to this before. My uncle used to explain away all the fossils and carbon dating evidence by saying that if you were to take a time machine back to the day adam was made and carbon dated the rocks, they’d appear to be millions of years old even though the earth was a few days old! In essence, his answer was, god made the rocks look old and put fake fossils in the ground from animals that never existed.
…And people wonder why I don’t believe this crap anymore.
Thank you, Blake Stacey – a gentleman and a scholar, for all I know. That was published more recently than I had realized.
If this is “Old Earth Creationism”, what is the Hindu fundamentalist creationism which insists that humans are hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of years old? “Super Mega Old Earth Creationism”? “Extremely Old Humanity Creationism”?
This is the type of craziness as portrayed in “Forbidden Archeology”.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mom/groves.html
I think I’ve got a new theory of creation, I call it Annoying Design Theory (AD Theory), or perhaps more specifically Personal Annoying Design Theory (PAD Theory). PAD Theory states that the closely observable universe was created to be annoying to me personally. As scientific proof I offer the fact that every time I leave me home and drive in my car people go out of their way to annoy me. Works as well as ID Theory does, and explains more about the nature of the universe along the way. Unlike ID Theory PAD Theory makes predictive testable statements, such as that when I leave my home and drive my car people will continue to annoy me. Under this theory creationists and ID Theorists were created specifically to annoy me, and furthermore predicts that they will continue to annoy me.
I’ll be taking meetings with publishers for the the rights to the book on my theory. :)
Ah, here we go:
From Thomas Gossett’s Race: The History of an Idea in America.
Hmm. Your hypothesis is intriguing Venger, but I see one glaring flaw in it:
The universe was designed to personally annoy me, not you.
Perhaps the fact that you are annoyed is a mechanism by which your attitude is soured so as to make you more likely to annoy me should we ever chance to meet. (Those that the universe doesn’t annoy are specially designed to annoy me with their idiotic optimism.) As you can infer, my hypothesis posits a deist designer, rather than a gnostic one who actively and directly meddles in my affairs.
Unlike traditional Design theories, mine is entirely compatible with evolution. For instance, at least 3.7 billion years were necessary to produce an industrial designer who designed my travelling coffee mug to be narrow enough at the bottom so as to fit some hypothetical SUV-driver’s cupholder, yet large enough at the top to be incapable of remaining upright in my cupholder-free Camry. The same 3.7 billion years were necessary to evolve a nervous system that produces severe pain signals when my genitalia are doused with hot coffee.
So, this is kind of a “punctuated creationism” theory then.
That’s okay, I’m not entirely sure I can prove I even exist. So I probably can’t be the central figure in a universe wide conspiracy to annoy me, though by the same token I can’t prove you exist either. That annoys me, so I’m safely back on firm philosophic grounds.
I’m sure however we’re both the product of some passing lunatic’s deranged mind.
Now if I could only prove the lunatic exists I’d be ever so much more content.
While it is common to think the Hebrew Bible has two creations accounts, this idea is clearly wrong. There are at least three creation accounts in the Hebrew Bible. If Psalm 74:12-17 isn’t a creation account I have no idea what it is.
Psalm. 74:12) Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the earth.
13) You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the dragons in the waters.
14) You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.
15) You cut openings for springs and torrents; you dried up ever-flowing streams.
16) Yours is the day, yours also the night; you established the luminaries and the sun.
17) You have fixed all the bounds of the earth; you made summer and winter. (NRSV)
And while it may seem to some as more “mythological” than the two accounts in Genesis, it isn’t.
Ya know PZ, you really pissed me off when called the director of the human genome project, discredited.
Who the hell are you but a squishy fish biologist. I mean that really pissed me off, His educational back ground is a lot more impressive than yours.
You are an arrogant bastard with a closed mind.
The story of Noah’s Ark is also a creation myth, so that would make 4
The story of Noah’s Ark is also a creation myth, so that would make 4
Posted by: BillCinSD | August 27, 2007 07:59 PM
What if it should ever be found? What then?
Uh-oh, The Physicist is mixing booze with his meds again.
Uh-oh, The Physicist is mixing booze with his meds again.
Posted by: John Scanlon, FCD |
Nice come back, calling names. You lose! I mean, this is what the commies and fascists like the NWO do, call names of all their detractors.
I have dug in my heals, neither ass wipes like you or this current administration is not going to stop me. I am in the fight, and will kick yall’s lying asses. Guts and glory, bring it on. You guys are basically cowards and will kneel before the new government. I have no use for you.
Actually, back in the ’60s Pastor Hoven taught my catechism class that the ancient Hebrew word used in Genesis didn’t mean “day” but instead “unit of time” and was quite vague.
That’s all it took to make Genesis compatible with evolution.
These Christianist idiots work very hard at dumbing up their faith, almost as if they were seeking out conflict, not converts.
Actually, back in the ’60s Pastor Hoven taught my catechism class that the ancient Hebrew word used in Genesis didn’t mean “day” but instead “unit of time” and was quite vague.
Well since the day was not created until the fourth day, why don’t you tell us?
“I have no use for you.”
And we should care because?
Turn off the computer and go take a nap, “Physicist”. Drunk commenting will get you banned.
“I have no use for you.”
And we should care because?
Posted by: Ginger Yellow
Honest disclosure, that is enough. You tell me you haven’t an agenda, you are liars. When the head of the humane genome project is dissed by a nobody Biologist, the agenda is clear.
Turn off the computer and go take a nap, “Physicist”. Drunk commenting will get you banned.
Posted by: PZ Myers | August
Ban me then, if you don’t like what I am saying. And blaming it on drunkenness is lame…
“Nice come back, calling names. You lose! I mean, this is what the commies and fascists like the NWO do, call names of all their detractors.”
Pot, meet kettle.
Dang, I love this blog. If it ain’t the entries, it’s the drama that ensues because of them…
“What if it should ever be found? What then?”
Then we would be forced to believe that a guy built a really large boat and rode out high water on it. The worldwide Flood would still be a myth.
After the last few comments, that “annoying universe” hypothesis is looking a lot more plausible…
–pr
Alas, your pastor was incorrect. “Yom” means “day”, and is quite specific.
I suppose that, as in English, one could make the meaning vague by saying the form equivalent to “In the days of”, but that’s not how it is used in Genesis. Note that the words for “morning” and “evening” are also quite specific.
“And there was evening and there was morning, one day”
I’m just saying.
Hmm. Your hypothesis is intriguing Venger, but I see one glaring flaw in it:
The universe was designed to personally annoy me, not you.
You fools. it’s not design, it’s a law of nature (Homeostatic Universe) and was extensively explored in Definitely Maybe, Strugatsky A., and Strugatsky B., 1978 (in translation).
he universe was designed to personally annoy me, not you.
You fools. it’s not design, it’s a law of nature>/i>
Amd you know this, how? Because it meets your own agenda, or maybe you can prove this for us all?
The Physicist, do you even realize that they were making a joke when they were talking about the Universe being designed to annoy people?
The idea that God created the Universe with the appearance of age is what I call the Trickster God hypothesis. We’re supposed to believe that God for some strange reason wanted to create a Universe that looked ancient when it really isn’t. Of course it does fit in with the petty behaviour so many people seem to attribute to God, such as condemning people to eternal torment for their choice of bed partners or eating the wrong combination of foods.
“The idea that God created the Universe with the appearance of age is what I call the Trickster God hypothesis. We’re supposed to believe that God for some strange reason wanted to create a Universe that looked ancient when it really isn’t.”
Personally I call this a corollary of the God Is A Dick hypothesis, which is borne out pretty well by the whole Old Testament and large swathes of the New Testament as well.
*scratches its hood* i don’t think i’m quite on the same page as this guy. two weeks… with 60MY in between? so, 60MY, then, surely?
and he’s still wrong. what the fuck was he trying to do, get the mean of YEC and OEC?
Lepht
Why do creationists think God is stupid?
And is The Physicist a colleague of The Geologist referred to @3?
I don’t think the Physicist is even a physicist. I think he more likely to say “do you want fries with that?”
Has anyone noticed he’s gotten a little more nasty lately? And he wasn’t usually so paranoid. He’s been hanging with the wingnuts again.
I am sure that I don’t need to convince anyone that xians are either totally ignorant or dumber than a stump. But the creation story was plagiarized from other sources like the Epic of Gilgamesh.
For the origins of the Adam and Eve story.
“Then Shamhat saw him–a primitive, a savage fellow from the depths of the wilderness!
“That is he, Shamhat! Release your clenched arms, expose your sex so he can take in your voluptuousness. Do not be restrained–take his energy! When he sees you he will draw near to you. Spread out your robe so he can lie upon you, and perform for this primitive the task of womankind! His animals, who grew up in his wilderness, will become alien to him, and his lust will groan over you.”
Shamhat unclutched her bosom, exposed her sex, and he took in her voluptuousness. She was not restrained, but took his energy. She spread out her robe and he lay upon her, she performed for the primitive the task of womankind. His lust groaned over her; for six days and seven nights Enkidu stayed aroused, and had intercourse with the harlot until he was sated with her charms. But when he turned his attention to his animals, the gazelles saw Enkidu and darted off, the wild animals distanced themselves from his body. Enkidu … his utterly depleted(?) body, his knees that wanted to go off with his animals went rigid; Enkidu was diminished, his running was not as before. But then he drew himself up, for his understanding had broadened. Turning around, he sat down at the harlot’s feet, gazing into her face, his ears attentive as the harlot spoke. The harlot said to Enkidu:
“You are beautiful, Enkidu, you are become like a god. Why do you gallop around the wilderness with the wild beasts? Come, let me bring you into Uruk-Haven, to the Holy Temple, the residence of Anu and Ishtar, the place of Gilgamesh, who is wise to perfection, but who struts his power over the people like a wild bull.” What she kept saying found favor with him.”
You find the six days and the receiving of knowledge from a woman. Only the perverted judeo-xians changed what was progress into a retrogression. Sort of like what they are doing today.
http://www.answers.com/topic/the-epic-of-gilgamesh-1
It is also worthwhile to look up the story of Sargon of Akkad which is the basis of the Noah’s Ark myth.
Venger and Brownian, you’ve begun to understand the roots of Annoyism. The essence of Annoyism permeates the world; your personal experiences are mere reflections of a higher plane. Maybe we should start a cult, using a red “A” as our symbol? No, wait…
And Physicist? As I remember, you have a BS in that area of study. Maybe you should grab some humility and use a lower case “p” for your name.
Of all the previous comments, only two were rational.
It’s so sad that so many people will not take the time to
examine something first, before “running in the dark”, and jumping to false conclusions.
There are no “creation accounts” in Genesis. God was showing Moses one day, from seven different weeks, with each week being from a different geological period of time.
Also, mankind has always been on Earth since Creation Week, but only in his present likeness since 64 Million BC.
So before making more silly statements, read the book first, else you are speaking from ignorance concerning what is being taught.
Turn off the computer and go take a nap, “Physicist”. Drunk commenting will get you banned.