Originally posted by WMCoolmon
That's what makes me wonder. If God is indeed all-powerful, why couldn't he have set things in motion billions of years ago? If you read the bible literally, after all, you're going to have a hard time believing in it at all, so I don't see a big problem with assuming that the whole creation deal is symbolic rather than literal, so that He wouldn't have to write a study guide for the bible to explain what "DNA" and "bacteria" are to early man.
'sides, God doesn't seem to be too big on the instant gratification thing either.
The nature of God (any form of diety/dieties) is such to preclude any possibility of disproof, anyways. (and proof, of course)
It's always been structured that way, so any sort of 'conflicting' scientific discovery can just be said to push back where God 'is'. Like....if they proved abiogenesis, then God would simply be pushed back to the big bang, etc, or abstracted as being the fundamental laws of physics, and soforth.
The main conflict over the likes of evolution is really down to Bible literalism, I think. It's also a response to the belief of certain more militant Christians that secularism and modern society is in some way immoral; largely, I guess, because the church wields less power over individuals now.
The problem these people have in particular with science is that it explains things working without God, or rather without the sort of God they've been espousing for all these years; they're basically unable to accept their particular interpretation is wrong. Science has, after all, never sought to address the existence of God, but simply to explain the world in terms of what we can see and prove to be true.
And on a side note, why do I end up posting these types of posts when really everyone knows this already.........?
