#Answers in Genesis

[isaacsapphire]

Pretty sure many of my followers are exactly the target audience of this video.

[wutbju]

BJU has some spending money, apparently.

[corin-tuckers-left-one]

Creationism is so ridiculous because the official explanation from Answers in Genesis for how marsupials reached Australia is that they were launched over here on volcanic debris from Mount Ararat.

This is obviously much more reasonable than the actual evolutionist explanation that they evolved in South America and migrated to Australia via Antarctica when all three were joined as Gondwana.

As an Australian with an evolutionary biology degree and a particular interest in marsupial evolution it's fucking hilarious.

[drowningworms]

A response on a friend's Facebook page to a fundie trying to pick a flight over a single verse because he has a gotcha lined up.

I'm pretty sure you would walk out of my talk too. And a lot sooner.

I don't read the Bible the same way you do. I used to. I used to be a very good fundamentalist and 6 day anti-evolutionist. So I understand where you are coming from. And I empathize with your position. So I’m warning you that what I believe is going to offend you and probably make you think some uncharitable things about me, my relationship with God, and my salvation.

I have no expectation of changing your mind, I’m just sharing what I believe and we are going to have to agree to disagree and live as good neighbors as best we can and discuss things nicely till God sets us both straight in a few decades after you and I have both kicked the bucket.

I am not a gap theorist. I believe, much like CS Lewis seemed to based on some things he said in "The Problem of Pain" that creation stories are meant to communicate deep spiritual truths and they were not meant to communicate historical accuracy or scientific understandings.

Unlike fundamentalist Muslims, I don't believe God dictated the scriptures to a prophet. Unlike fundamentalist Mormons, I don't believe prophets copied scriptures off of golden plates.

I believe that the Jewish scriptures are far more of a team effort.

The Jewish scriptures are the result of imperfect humans trying to hear Holy Spirit's whispers. Being human, they could not hear perfectly and were understanding Holy Spirit through their own cultural lenses and personal experiences/lenses. There is a huge subjective element to the Jewish scriptures as Noah, Abraham, Moses, and the prophets did their best to write/tell their understandings within their very small and isolated worlds.

Genesis did not have Genesis chapter 1 when first put down by Moses.

It only had the Garden creation story that came from Noah.

The creation Week story was written during or soon after Babylon. It does not plagiarize the Babylonian myths as some like to snidely accuse. It uses them like a meme. The meaning is in the differences. Everyone knew the Babylonian myths because they were the main superpower and had been for centuries and would be for centuries more. Using the Babylonian myths seemed a good way to keep their own creation story relevant and understandable for a very long time. The Jews include a huge amount of snide swipes at the Babylonian’s mythology/religion while also communicating the beauty and goodness of God and the goodness and beauty of God’s Creation. Mel Brooks carries on that tradition.

So for most of events in the Bible, the Jewish people only knew the Garden story of how it was all perfect till the snake tempted the woman to sin and the woman then tempted the man to sin too and then God cursed not only the snake and those two humans, but all of their descendants, the animals, the planet and the whole universe to death and suffering. And the sin stories that followed showed how sin ruined everything and that even wiping out all of humanity and starting over didn’t work so God chose Abram and the Jewish people to be God’s special project and that God was a patriarchal suzerain king who demanded perfection to God’s every demand even when it came to murdering your own children. (Or other people’s children who were living in the land God told you you could have.)

What followed was a learning experience lead by the prophets and opposed by the priests/aristocracy to learn how God was different from that and that God really really wanted people to treat each other and even the animals and the land fairly and that caring for the poor and oppressed was the most important thing. While the priests and the rest of the aristocracy and fundamentalists were convinced it was primarily about perfect obedience and worshipping God correctly and within their religion and justice, kindness, and mercy were secondary.

It was not until the priests and aristocracy had their power and wealth stripped from them and were exiled into Babylon that they began to question their understandings without their “promised” land or temple or sacrifices.

When several generations later they were returned to the land their ancestors had lived in, they were a different kind of people. The priests and other aristocrats had lost so much of their wealth and power and pride and were a new people with a better understanding of God. And they wrote a new creation story that focused, not on sin, but on Creation and God’s goodness and generosity. That they lived in a good creation. And that the things other people thought controlled everything were lights and calendars to help them. That the world was full of order and beauty. Even if it wasn’t safe, it was good.

And humans were no longer sinners. They were very good.

And they put this new piece of scripture, not in its own book as you or I might have, but instead they put it at the very beginning of their most important scripture to change the way they read and understood all of their scriptures.

That argument between the Priests/Aristocrats/Fundamentalists vs the Prophets was still going on at the time of Jesus and is still going on today.

I think that if we can let go of our fundamentalist reading and interpretation of the first few chapters of Genesis, and reinterpret things in light of Genesis One as being it’s own little section from a different place/time/context, we will have a much truer understanding of God and, more importantly, God’s heart and the purpose of Jesus and the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection. And furthermore we will have a better relationship with God and our neighbors and God’s good Creation.

Sorry not sorry to write so much. But it is a complicated question and a complicated answer and I still only gave you a barebones outline.

[bowbowis]

Why are we putting off such fundamental communication skills until college anyway? Especially when the bullshit peddlers are producing content specifically targeted at the K-12 demographic? Kids should be learning basic logic and skepticism right alongside 1 + 1 =2 and the alphabet song, before they've had a chance to build an entire worldview based on nonsense.

Ken Ham (who you may know as "that creationist guy who debated Bill Nye and got obliterated so hard that even his own followers couldn't pretend he'd won") just opened an unaccredited K-12 school, where he teaches children that evolution is myth; Earth is 6,000 years old; that humans coexisted with non-avian dinosaurs (which are also dragons); and that a 600 year old man and two of every kind of animal survived a physically impossible flood on a wooden boat that was both smaller than an American football field and still too big to be seaworthy. And that's not even touching on his views about LGBTQ+ people, atheists, and basically anyone who doesn't follow his particular interpretation of Christianity.

Parents will send their children to that school because they never learned the necessary skills to avoid being taken in by grifters, and now their kids will never even have the chance.

[brainypixel]

Join Lily for Seasons 1 and 2 of Lily's Lab on Answers.tv!!

[innovationpastor]

Pixels With Purpose: A Conversation with Brannon Hollingsworth

[corin-tuckers-left-one]

Suck on that Ken Ham you stupid bastard!

The Worst Attraction in Every State

[andrewpcannon]

The Wonder of Creation: Exploring the Purpose and Relevance of the Creation Narrative in Apologetics

The first eleven chapters in the Bible are my favorite chapters. As someone who questioned their veracity before I started following Jesus, I understand that there are some difficult things in these chapters. When we read these chapters, we read them like 21st century Americans who are obsessed with particular orders of events and the scientific method—things that the Hebrew people were not…

[wakingthefury]

Where Are All the Human Fossils?

So where is the missing link? 

Where are the remains of people killed by the flood?

Let’s get some answers.

[wutbju]

Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis appointed Martyn Iles, formerly director of the Australian Question Lobby, to the position of Chief Ministry Officer, ministry of course being Answers in Genesis’ core activity. Here’s why that matters.

[herunswithscissors]

I would not be the least surprised if Ken Ham's Answers In Genesis profiteer company was already using that as if it were a legitimate term to define "dinosaurs before the evolutionists painted feathers on them to spread their evil lies."

I was talking about pop culture dinosaurs vs scientifically accurate dinosaurs, only my brain glitched and I ended up saying "biblically accurate dinosaurs" instead

[preacherpollard]

Dozen Thousand

Gary Pollard It’s so encouraging that many public figures (by extension, many of their audiences) have rejected outright atheism and godless evolution! Even those who would never consider themselves believers have rejected some of the main pillars of evolution. Among them are people like Joe Rogan, Randall Carlson, Graham Hancock, Jordan Peterson (who does describe himself as a believer in some…

[christianblogr]

Truth Traveler Newest Answers in Genesis Attraction coming to Pigeon Forge

Embark on a Journey Through Time with Truth Traveler — Coming soon to The Island at Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, is an attraction that promises to take visitors on an unparalleled adventure through biblical history. "Truth Traveler," developed by the creators of the renowned Creation Museum and Ark Encounter in Kentucky, is set to be a state-of-the-art virtual reality experience that will transport guests back to the days of Noah and beyond.

Embark on a Journey Through Time with Truth Traveler — Coming soon to The Island at Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, is an attraction that promises to take visitors on an unparalleled adventure through biblical history. “Truth Traveler,” developed by the creators of the renowned Creation Museum and Ark Encounter in Kentucky, is set to be a state-of-the-art virtual reality experience that will transport…