In response to the OP:
There's so much emotion and preconcieved notions around creationism vs evolution that it's hard to cut through people's defenses long enough to actually present them with real science versus opinions. I've had my own brush ups with atheism though unlike some of my friends I'm glad to say I was never dumb enough to call myself an atheist. It was simple enough to do what I wanted and claim I didn't follow in the way of my parents/siblings and that was all that was needed to be said. I didn't have to talk about uncertainty, is there a Hell, is there a Heaven, you just ignored it along with everyone else that you wanted to hang out with.
THat said, this area is pretty interesting to me.
First, I used to think that evolution was a *possible* means of God creating humanity, and all life. However, upon talking to some other more theologically educated Christians I learned quickly that evolution and the creation story cannot co-exist whether you take the bible literally or not.
1) Evolution teaches that 'millions of years of death' brought humans into the world. The Bible teaches that humans brought death into the world through sin. Before sin, if nothing could die, then it couldn't have evolved.
2) Evolution teaches that birds evolved from reptiles, but the Bible says that Birds were created on the fifth day and the land creatures on the sixth. Even if you don't literally take that as 1 day, still God declared he created the birds before land creatures that supposedly the birds were derived from through Evolution.
Secondly, I would never want to take up the task of proving the world is 6000 years old. What we can prove however is the scientific accuracy of statements the Bible makes, and look for evidence of other claims that the Bible makes. The Bible claims there was a flood about 4400 years ago. Dr Kent Hovind has done a lot of work in this area. He is an unabashed creationist and has found a LOT of evidence supporting a worldwide flood.
His site is DrDino.com, he's got some videos on the subject, but here are some example of a worldwide flood:
1) The grand canyon: it's said that a river carved the canyon over millions of years. THe problem is, there is no delta which is indicative of a slowly formed spillway. Secondly, the very top of the canyon is a lot higher than the bottom, making it also impossible according to Hovind for the river to form.
2) The sahara desert is growing. It grows at something like a mile a year or maybe less due to the pre-vailing wind pattern in the area, so almost all year long the dust goes one way and eventually all the good soil is gone. If they take the rate of erosion and scale it back to when there was no desert, it's roughly 4400 years.
3) I believe Niagra falls is similar to #2.
Dr Hovind has a TON of examples of evidence that points back to a flood 4400 years ago.
Until I really heard about research (yes, scientific) in the area of creationism, I was all for evolution as being a viable method of God creating everything.
However, it would take a cruel and inept God to create the world as it is today over millions and millions of years of death, and then let his prophets contradict himself in his written word.
There's so much emotion and preconcieved notions around creationism vs evolution that it's hard to cut through people's defenses long enough to actually present them with real science versus opinions. I've had my own brush ups with atheism though unlike some of my friends I'm glad to say I was never dumb enough to call myself an atheist. It was simple enough to do what I wanted and claim I didn't follow in the way of my parents/siblings and that was all that was needed to be said. I didn't have to talk about uncertainty, is there a Hell, is there a Heaven, you just ignored it along with everyone else that you wanted to hang out with.
THat said, this area is pretty interesting to me.
First, I used to think that evolution was a *possible* means of God creating humanity, and all life. However, upon talking to some other more theologically educated Christians I learned quickly that evolution and the creation story cannot co-exist whether you take the bible literally or not.
1) Evolution teaches that 'millions of years of death' brought humans into the world. The Bible teaches that humans brought death into the world through sin. Before sin, if nothing could die, then it couldn't have evolved.
2) Evolution teaches that birds evolved from reptiles, but the Bible says that Birds were created on the fifth day and the land creatures on the sixth. Even if you don't literally take that as 1 day, still God declared he created the birds before land creatures that supposedly the birds were derived from through Evolution.
Secondly, I would never want to take up the task of proving the world is 6000 years old. What we can prove however is the scientific accuracy of statements the Bible makes, and look for evidence of other claims that the Bible makes. The Bible claims there was a flood about 4400 years ago. Dr Kent Hovind has done a lot of work in this area. He is an unabashed creationist and has found a LOT of evidence supporting a worldwide flood.
His site is DrDino.com, he's got some videos on the subject, but here are some example of a worldwide flood:
1) The grand canyon: it's said that a river carved the canyon over millions of years. THe problem is, there is no delta which is indicative of a slowly formed spillway. Secondly, the very top of the canyon is a lot higher than the bottom, making it also impossible according to Hovind for the river to form.
2) The sahara desert is growing. It grows at something like a mile a year or maybe less due to the pre-vailing wind pattern in the area, so almost all year long the dust goes one way and eventually all the good soil is gone. If they take the rate of erosion and scale it back to when there was no desert, it's roughly 4400 years.
3) I believe Niagra falls is similar to #2.
Dr Hovind has a TON of examples of evidence that points back to a flood 4400 years ago.
Until I really heard about research (yes, scientific) in the area of creationism, I was all for evolution as being a viable method of God creating everything.
However, it would take a cruel and inept God to create the world as it is today over millions and millions of years of death, and then let his prophets contradict himself in his written word.