Please help me out here. \n\nCan you be a Christian and still believe that the earth is millions of years old and that dinosaurs and evolution were / are real?\n\nDo Creationists think that non-creationists are also non-Christians (since they do not believe what the Bible says?)\n\nIf this is true, does that mean that only Creationists are real Christians?\n\nBut if the opposite also true, that non-creationists think that creationists are wrong, then the creationists can't be real Christians either.\n\nIf these two questions are true, then am I wrong to think that there are NO real Christians?\n\nGoodness me! That can't be right either...\n\nHELP - MY BRAIN'S IN A SPIN!\n\nPlease say if you are a creationist believer or not with your replies. Thank you.
207571
I'm sure this is tongue in cheek, but obviously one can be christian and not think that the bible is meant to be read as literal truth in every word.  you'd go crazy reconciling the contradictions.
195502
your question sounds less like a question and more like a rant against the people you're asking to answer it. I suppose it is crazy to think that God created dinosaurs as well as the rest of the world.  I mean, if I'm brave enough to believe God made an entire universe out of nothing, why are dinosaurs so hard to add to the equation?  \nand there are Christians who believe in the day age theory, or theistic evolution. Ancient Hebrew, which the creation story was written in, is very poetic, and can be difficult to translate exactly/literally. So when they refer to days, some scholars say a day could refer to any period of time, such as an age, one thousand years, etc.  \nand Christians aren't the only ones capable of being narrowminded. you don't sound like you accept other peoples' right to believe something different than you and still be intelligent humans. that's called hypocrisy.  I'm christian, and I respect your ability to believe something different, even if I think you're wrong. and I don't immediate assume you're stupid for doing so.  so I guess you're in the same club as the ones you criticize.
119604
This is an interesting subject. First of all I do belive in God&Creationalism, but however Im not very religous.Before God created Adam and Eve there must have been life on Earth.\nPerhaps God chose the Earth to put Man on because it was a very viable place to live. In Genisis chapter one it is written "In the begining God created the heavens and the Earth, and the Earth was VOID and WHITHOUT form" "Then the Spirit of the Lord moved apon the face of the deep... Its hard to say really, but in my opinion this is similar to the way science sugests that it all began, on a barren rocky world filled with an endless sea with which life could proliferate. There is evidence on the surface of the Earth that sugests that massive impacts from space have occured. Perhaps before the time of Man, the Earth was filled with Dinosaurs and 'quote' other prehistoric life and it was a great place for LIFE. Then one day for a reason known only to God, he chose to destroy the Earth with an asteroid so massive that it compleatly decimated everything, and left the planet, dark, void, and without proper form. The neanderthal men, in my opinion are evidence of somthing else mentioned in the Bible. In Genisis chapter six it says "the sons of God saw the beatiful women of the human race, and took any they wanted as there wives...in those days and even after GIANTS lived on the Earth" .The sons of God probly refers to angelic beings. Neanderthals were supposed to be much larger, and more robust then regular  humans of today. I think I have seen a few shows on the Discovery channle about human evolution, and acording to science, neanderthals, and humans most likely lived side by side. Then for reasons unknown, there was only MAN left as if the neanderthal died out. What about the great Mammoths, Sloths, Sabertoothed Cats, among other animals? I think that they, and the neanderthals were not included on NOAHS ARK. There is so much information to think about! Even so, there is still a lot of mystery. I do know one thing, all the PERFECT laws of the universe, from GRAVITY to MAGNATISIM, to PHYSICS just prove that that the universe was created intelligently, and beatifully might I ad. Sorry to type so much I have wandered about these issues too. Please remember that I was just speaking hypotheticaly on the what ifs. Hope I helped a little.
14127
Neither creationism nor evolution can be proved 100% correct, but one proof of creationism is that the fossil record shows the sudden appearance of fossils (like an explosion of organisms- as explained in Genesis 1 with the six days of creation) instead of many "transitional forms" over millions and millions of years as evolution predicts. I don't know of any websites, but a book called "The Genesis Flood" was very helpful and also one called "Evolution: The Fossils Still Say No!" I happen to know this because I just had to do a paper on this very subject. Good luck!
584539
Science does NOT state that non-believers are 100% right! There have been and currently are plenty of scientists that have proved that creation is real. You do know that Darwin/big bang are theories right? You are familiar with the definition of theory correct? IF you answered yes, than you must know also that 97% of scientists world wide CANNOT explain how the eye was formed and they have admitted that there is virtually no way that it could have evolved right?
83294
This is a topic that sets a lot of people off. Mainly creationism states god created everything, and the burden of evolution is, it being based on science, it must have hard evidence to prove the existance of evolution.\n\nSince Origin of the Species by Chales Darwin in 1859, moutains of evidence has come forward to prove that evolution is behind every living creature on earth. The one weak linkis that evolution hasn't yet been able to prove how life first started. It is this one point that creationist harp on, and state as their proof that god is behind everything.\n\nIt must be noted that until recent times teh age of the Earth was only believed to be 10,000 years old, this has been disproven. It can also be compared to medevil times when the world was considered flat and it was thought that the earth lay in the center of the universe. In time science will find a solid explination for everything that we consider impossible today.\n\nAs a chemist and a scientist, there are many things in science that boil down to beautiful mathmatical relationships, or theories that are very simple yet profound implications. What I believe, is that who was ever here before the universe made a very complex yet elegant system of particles and enegrgetic interactions that give us the world today. What I have against creationsim is that it doesn't seek to find the real awnser; their reasoning is that it is too complex to be understood, despite historical evidence of things being not understood only to be explained in good detail later. The people that say the bottom line in science is too complex to understand today are the same people who believed that the world was flat 800 years ago. \n\nWikipedia has a good breakdown on evolution and opinion, hope my thoughts helped
576200
WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THE EARTH ISNT 6,000 YEARS OLD BECAUSE SCIENCE SAYS SO ?? AND WHERE DO THEY GET THEYRE INFO FROM LIKE THE CARBON DATING WHERE DO THEY GET THAT INFO FROM I MEAN DONT YOU NEED TO COMPARE SOMETHING WITH SOMETHING EVEN I CAN SAY OH YEA THIS ROCK IS 2 YEARS OLD OR 2 MILLION SCIENCE IS JUST THAT ITS SCIENCE I BELIEVE IN GOD MAYBE THIS WORLD IS 6,000 YEARS OLD MAYBE IT ISNT BUT DOES IT ACTUALLY MATTER ANYWAY?  SCIENCE PROVES THAT GOD EXISTS BUT DONT WANT TO ADMIT IT I WAS THINKING ONE DAY IF ALLLLLLLLLL THIS UNIVERSE STUFF JUST HAPPENED ----BAMMMMMMMM----  WHY DOES THE WEATHER BEHAVE THE WAY IT DOES OR THE SUNSETS OR RISES ????  IT ISNT BY ACCIDENT IT IS FROM INTELLIGENT DESIGN .   I DONT BELIEVE SCIENTIFIC DESIGN NOR DO I BELIEVE THE ICE AGE HAPPENED THERE WAS A FLOOD YOU KNOW & THAT REALLY MESSED THINGS UP .
182997
A belief in god and evolution is mainly a problem for closed-minded bible literalists...typically fundamentalists, who believe that every word in the bible is written as god intended.\n\nThe problem you face is this. If the bible isn't taken as a literal document of belief, how do you choose which bits to believe and which bits not to believe? So, is execution right or wrong...because the bible is both "for" and "against". Same for homosexuality (although not in modern terms).\n\nMost scientists I know who are christians accomodate this dilemma by using the bible as a broad belief framework - which is perfectly acceptable - and they talk about how they are able to draw their values from this position, but they keep an open mind about what science discovers and how science can help. \n\nBible literalists have a hard time trying to present their ideas without attacking science, as though science is some kind of enemy - the kind of enemy that will end up saving their lives from cancer or serious accident someday. The greatest disservice these people play in society is to present the idea to children that science is somehow seriously flawed and that nothing can ever be proven - unlike their belief system, however, which has a complete video record of god creating the earth in 6 days (sorry, that was sarcasm...something bible literalists will have a hard time understanding).\n\nTo Vangyblue below - that's the biggest pile of nonsense I've read for for at least 30 minutes. All the evidence of the failure of American education is present in your response.
518729
You mean creationists, not christians...there are differences.\n\nThey deny it for one reason...it throws enough doubt onto what they believe, that it could shatter the foundation of their belief.  There are some who rationalize the 2 things together, and while I don't agree with trying to merge fact and fiction here, at least they're trying to be logical.  Anyone who believes something so vehemently, that they blind themselves to the truth, usually does it out of fear; whether its a fear of death (believe in a happy afterlife), addiction (do 12 steps, because you didn't CHOOSE to be an addict), accountability ("the devil is why bad things happen to me"), or something else.\n\nHonestly, I'm just as confused as why they would rather come from dirt, than evolve from a living thing myself.
574281
I understand what you're saying -- I believe in the theory of evolution.  But you do realize that people are just going to say God put it there in the beginning?  As fossils -- not as ancient creatures imprinted or encased in stone.
215878
i don't understand why some atheists think that the existence of dinosaurs is some huge earth shattering knock against the bible.  yeah they existed.  do you have a point you are trying to make?\n\nedit: dude, you think penn and teller are funny?  what's next, pimping carrot top?
364203
One of your other anwerers mentions the fact that man has only been around for the blink of an eye in relation to the time that dinosaurs existed. Doesn't that make us pathetically arrogant to go thinking that we are the chosen ones? He could well be right and we could be here and gone in less than 200,000 years. As for why the bible doesn't mention dinosaurs; the men who wrote it had no idea that they had existed.
140999
It is thought that man came from ape like ancestors, not quite monkey's.  \n\nIt could take hundreds of thousands of years for macro evolution to occur.  Wait around that long, and i guarantee there will be NEW species.  So it is still happening.\n\nThe fossil record is not complete because fossils are hard to come by, not everything fossilises despite contrary belief.  In fact it's amazing we have as much info as we do.\n\nHow on earth does it take less belief to believe in a god, there is no evidence whatsoever for this!  At least evolution has enough evidence to fill several hundred warehouses, what do you have, testimony.. Yeah right, thanks, i'll keep to evidence, not faith to inform my decisions about the world around me.
151410
Let me begin by saying that I always enjoy reading your answers and very often you beat me to the punch with an explanation that is more coherent than I could likely come up with. Excellent work.\n\nI think that much of the issue here comes back to the basic divisiveness of faith. It makes sense for each religion to clearly define lines between "us" and "them." Jesus might have believed in peace and love, much like a modern day hippie, but the only real way to gather people around a common idea is to give them a common enemy. These days it's considered relatively poor taste to engage in crusades against Muslims, or chase Jews out of town for drinking the blood of the Christian born, so modern-day Christians have needed to unite against a new common enemy, evolutionists. Strangely, the only group of Christians now required to agree with us are the Catholics, based on JPII's statments that evolution is the most likely explanation for the current state of the world. Then again, many Protestants have issues with Catholics (and Jehovah's Witnesses, and Mormons), but I think their favorite target du jour is the atheistic evolutionists.\n\nOne of the nice things about scapegoating is that you don't really have to define what is so terrible about the goats. Most of the time you can just point a finger and shriek. Pretty soon the rest of the mob will join in. As far as I know there has been no theory put forth by the creationist camp as to the "true" motives of evolutionists. Clearly most middle-of-the-road Christians (well, the ones who don't agree with us) feel that we've just studied the world and come to the wrong conclusions. However, many others likely feel that there is a nefarious agenda behind evolutionist ideas. Fortunately, they have a catch-all go-to-guy when it comes to nefarious agendas. Anything that isn't "godlike" is always attributed to this character. What's his name? Could it be...Satan?\n\nI'm sure that there are creationists out there who think that most evolutionists are on Satan's payroll and will be driving big gold Cadillacs around shortly after the Rapture. Sadly, no amount of reasoning on our part will get them to think any differently. In the meantime they will continue to see all of us as part of some cabal in Satan's service. It's strange to think that there was a time when only heavy-metal bands and role-playing-gamers were part of The Devil's army, now it seems that a degree in biochemistry is a standard recruitment tactic. \n\nWell, keep up the good work, and I'll see you at the meetings.
57714
Of course Evolution makes NO sense. Let me ask you, Are u a believer in Macro evolution or lets say Micro evolution. You evolutionists are ALWAYS chaniging the story. Evolutionist: The earth beith 6 Billion years old. \nOther evolutionist: No no idiot the earth is 600 billion years old. (Btw the earth is closer to 6000 years old ;)\n\nPoint proven thanx for reading.
583425
Yes of course they are! They and the suckers they mislead. \nThe brilliance of the charlatans of our day can be seen in the postings of many of their followers to yahoo answers. These charlatans have convinced the ignorant that not only is their opinion just as good as the opinion of experts (people who have spent their entire life studying a subject) it's actually better, because it's not based on unapproachable 'egghead' stuff, but on a child-like faith in sweet Jesus that even an idiot can have.  \nCrooks like Stroebel and Hovind are lying to this crowd and they mostly know it too. \nJust one example of this is their treatment of radioactive dating. When creationists say that dinosaur bones have been found that radio-carbon date to a few thousand years old, this leads their readers to assume that the dinosaur bones are only a few thousand years old, but surely the creationist know that carbon14 has a half-life of only of 5730 years. Potassium-argon dating is used to date anything over a million years old, and using that dating method, dinosaur bones date from between 140 and 65 million years. The creationists must know a simple fact like that. They complain about the unreliability of radioactive dating methods but see no problem with setting their clocks to standards based on radioactive decay. It's extremely reliable as a method of setting chronology.\nThere is a vast array of intertwining evidence that supports evolution, and the extremely old age of the universe and of the earth. Fields as diverse as biology, chemistry, geology, geography, nuclear physics, and astronomy, have given humans a wonderfully coherent and comprehensive picture of the universe we live in, of what it used to be like, and of what it most probably will be like in the future. It is a picture based on theories with not just great, but astonishing, predictive power. \nCreation science proves nothing, does not explain existing evidence, and has astonishingly poor predictive power. This is why no one at all, except Christian Fundamentalists, believes in creationism. \nUnfortunately creationists sound impressive to the ignorant and the gullible, and the English speaking world has both these types in abundance.
450825
Fools of faith.  I always enjoy asking devout Christians if they believe in dinosaurs.  When they say yes I ask them how long ago they lived.  When they say millions of years ago I ask them how that could be when the Bible says the Earth is only 6000 years old!  It's funny watching them try to squirm their way outta that one.