how long are the days in the creation story in genesis?

if you're a christian apologist trying to consolidate evolution into the literal creation story (which cant be done) then one day would be approximately (4,500,000,000-6000)/7 = 642,856,286 years long.

"We can believe or reject evolution, it doesn't matter, the church has no official position."

i've been recently messaging back and forth with a somewhat brainwashed and non-rational mormon who goes by the youtube username TheSkepticChristian (NOT!). he wrote the following claim to me:

"We can believe or reject evolution, it doesn't matter, the church has no official position."

and a personal-christian contact of mine on facebook wrote something similar to me today:

"I am rather conflicted because of understanding both views (atheism and Christianity)."

here's my response:
evolution by mutations, genetic drift and natural selection and the literal, young earth, old testament creation by YHWH are mutually exclusive models.

furthermore, a key element of natural selection is death, (the survival of the fittest). according to the old (genesis 2:17) and new testament (romans 5:12), death was introduced with the fall about 5800 years ago. according to the current model of evolution, we are but one of millions of interrelated species. the old testament tells us that we're not related to any other lifeform on earth whatsoever, but that we are created in god's image and are his children and he is our father.

an exmormon named chulotc (on exmormon.org) responded to me with the following:

When I was a kolobian it was easy to rationilize evolution and maintain my core belief system. Elohim organized matter which already existed (preserving thermodynamics), that matter coalesced into stars, supernovae, smaller stars, planets, moons, etc.

The conditions were such that biological life manifested and eventually evolved into higher primates, two of which elohim placed in a garden and put kolobian spirits into.

wherein i responded:

the problems with this are that the book of genesis claims:
1) adam was the first man, the father of humans.
2) YHWH created adam from the dust, he wasnt an evolved, living man, plucked from a group of other living men and put into a garden of eden. he didnt have a homo sapien father and mother and neither did eve because YHWH created eve from the rib of adam.
3) adam was immortal to begin with and death entered the world after eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
4) creation of animals and man happened on different "days" or iterations, whereas with evolution, homo sapiens and animals (and plants, etc) have been evolving side by side in one long continuous process.

then there's the anachronism in genesis 1:1-5 that the earth was created *before* the sun and then in verse 16, that the stars (the rest of the universe) were not created until the fourth day, long after the creation of the earth and sun.

according to nasa, about half the stars in our milky way galaxy alone are older than our sun.

"in billions of years anything can happen" doesnt explain anything!

here's my response to a young earth creationist argument:

nick humphrey Apr 27, 11:08 am
On Apr 27, 9:18 am, rmj wrote:

> The old "in billions of years anything can happen" argument. Irrefutable
> because it says nothing.

as opposed to the everything happened in the last 10,000 years =)

"there is no one single way to disprove a church/religion"

here's my response to the claim that it is impossible to disprove a religion. the key is disproving direct or indirect scientific claims.

Your comment is misleading. There is no single piece of logic that will ever prove/disprove a church. It is just one piece of the puzzle
judastefarianist 1 year ago

@judastefarianist actually the evidence that homo sapiens began approximately 200,000 years ago and not 5800-6000 years ago is a great single way to discredit judaism, christianity, islam and any other old-testament-based/abrahamic religion.
nickleus1977 1 sec ago

conversation between me and my tbm mormon friend

his comments begin with ">". my response comes beneath that line.
------------

> I believe that the world is surrounded by proof that God does exist. Alma 30:44 - "...all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator."

because things exist, god exists? how about the dairy cow or the dog or giant strawberries or...? these are things designed by man. because something exists doesnt equate to PROOF that there is a supernatural god, yahweh--one of a thousand different gods we have "scriptures" about.

> God does exist. My belief in Him does not take away freedom or pursuit of happiness. My belief system does not infringe on others ability to believe how they wish. I believe that others have the God given right to believe and worship how they choose. My understanding doesn't remove or impose upon the free will of others.

one word: prop8

> God does exist

stating something as a fact doesnt make it true, even though boyd packer tells you so:
"A testimony is found in the bearing of it." (from "The Candle of the Lord," Ensign, Jan. 1983, pp. 54-55)

this implies:
If you don't know whether something [we Mormons teach] is true, just bear your testimony of it anyway, as if you knew it, and eventually you will come to find that you 'know' it.

this is called self-brainwashing.

> The creation of life cannot be explained by science. Sure, there might be a process explained through the use of combining DNA from a man and DNA from a woman. Chromosomal Pairs from each combining to form a new entity that then begins to replicate and "create" a new human. But how does science explain how each individual body part is created through that replication process.

science can sure explain A LOT about the creation of life and is finding out new information all the time. what is religion doing: god created life. period.? doctors and scientists know how to clone biological organisms, regrow tissue and manipulate the human body in many ways. you can technically choose the gender of your baby these days. geneticists KNOW how cells reproduce based on genetic encoding.

> Science does explain some things, but it has the inability to explain all things. That is why both Science and Faith are important.

you keep trying to marginalize science, when religion explains nothing. saying "a miracle happened" explains NOTHING. saying "god created the universe" explains NOTHING. every comfort and technology you have is the product of the scientific process.

> I take that same understanding through science, combine it with my faith and knowledge of God, and increase my peace and understanding.

sorry, but this sounds really pompous.

> I do not impose my belief system on others.

missionary work, temple ordinances for the dead, indoctrination of children. can your kids stay home from church whenever they want to?

> Neither of us will ever be persuaded by the other.

tell me something persuasive =)

my response to "No one has all the answers, and the world is surrounded by contradictions."

my mormon friend wrote to me in a mail recently:

So now that you have found a new way of life, tell me what your purpose is. Do you now intend on trying to contradict all religions, or just the LDS Faith? No one has all the answers, and the world is surrounded by contradictions.

my response:

well, i don't have a purpose, i simply exist, but isn't everybody's *real* desire to do things that make them happy/give them pleasure?
i enjoy discovering and uncovering logical fallacies, yes, especially when they are a part of a belief/political system that tries to take away people's freedoms and pursuit of happiness, as long as THAT pursuit of happiness doesn't infringe upon others, etc.

> No one has all the answers, and the world is surrounded by contradictions.

this is exactly how religions full of cognitive dissonance want their believers to respond to things they are taught that are contradictory or things they don't understand:
"well, god understands it. he'll sort it out in the eternities. it's not relevant to my salvation."
"if it can't be explained then god must have done it"
"no one will ever be able to understand/explain that. god's ways are not our ways, his ways are higher than our ways"
etc...

on the contrary, science can explain A LOT of things; science has A LOT of answers. it's the BEST tool we have to understand the world around us. like i've mentioned before, just look at all that science ALREADY has given us answers to. we have, e.g.:
* microwave ovens
* atom smashers
* lasers
* virtual reality
* computers and the www
* organ transplants
* we've been to the moon

the list goes on and on.

there's a really cool debate between sam harris and michael shermer vs. deepak chopra about "the future of god". a really cool opening remark by shermer was that "we're only really talking about the future of the *belief* in god. belief in belief."

i know the church teaches you that you can only know REAL truth by "the testimony of the holy ghost", but when you think rationally about it, this is absolutely untrue, and the REAL world doesn't work that way. testable, reproducible and peer-reviewed scientific data is the only way people in the real world establish "truth". the FDA requires this in order to legalize medicine.
the only way poor kids get into ivy league colleges is a scholarship, granted on the basis of perfect grades and the highest test scores. and so on and so on.

when you look e.g. at the old testament's teachings, you can see that these were based on the knowledge (science) that they had at that time in the bronze age. we know that the earth revolves around the sun. we know the earth is not flat. we know there wasn't a global flood. we know that homo sapiens have existed for at least 100,000 years. we know what epilepsi is--we take our child to a doctor when he starts seizing, not a priest because we think he's possessed of the devil or a demon. we know that you don't stone your child if he doesn't obey you. we know you don't stone a woman if she commits adultery.

i know it might be hard to swallow (for me it was the opposite, i was excited when i understood all of this), and the natural reaction is to fall back on feelings you get, feelings/impressions you think come from god or the holy ghost, but like i've said before, suicide bombers believe in their cause even MORE than you believe in yours, because they LITERALLY believe that they will enter paradise and meet muhammad and receive their virgins enough to actually kill themselves (and others). most people in other religions have the exact same feelings/impressions that you have experienced. the simple explanation for this is psychology. and again thinking rationally about it, feelings and the supernatural never trump scientific facts. that's why no one has ever taken james randi's 1 million dollar prize for anyone who can prove he has supernatural abilities