In John 18:37–38, Jesus says He came into the world *“to testify to the truth,”* and Pilate responds, *“What is truth?”* In Christian theology, “truth” is often associated with God’s nature, His Word, and the person of Jesus Christ (John 14:6). Jesus also says in John 16:13 that the Holy Spirit “will guide you into all truth.” However, does this theological concept of truth also encompass factual truths about the created world (e.g., the shape of the earth, historical facts, scientific realities), or is it limited to spiritual and moral truths revealed by God? How have Christian theologians understood the scope of “truth” in Scripture?

I'm going to give an example. If my parents only met because of Hitler, would I not exist if not for the actions of Hitler. Or does God give the same souls life regardless of our parents? There are different verses in which some would say we have existed before birth (Jeremiah 1:5), and others claiming that we are created from nothing (Genesis 2:7).

Young Earth Creationists (YEC) and fundamentalist flat earthers continue to look to Genesis 1 for an explanation of cosmogony. Did the Catholic Church ever admit that science triumphed over pre-scientific religious origin stories?

Origen and some early Christian thinkers speculated that God may have created and destroyed worlds in cycles before the current creation described in Genesis 1. This idea, though speculative, raises the question: since Scripture does not detail what God did in His eternal past (before "In the beginning"), on what biblical basis do Christian traditions reject such views? Given that: - God is eternal and existed before time, - Genesis 1 focuses on the beginning of our world, not necessarily God's first act of creation, - Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, "He has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end," How do Christians who reject Origen’s cyclical creation model ground that rejection **biblically**, rather than merely philosophically or theologically? Are there specific Scriptures or doctrinal principles that limit God's act of creation to a single beginning as described in Genesis?

Old Earth Creationists (OECs) interpret the "days" in Genesis 1 as representing long periods (e.g., millions of years) rather than literal 24-hour days, to align with scientific evidence for an ancient Earth. What scriptural passages and theological arguments do OECs use to support this non-literal interpretation?

In Genesis 1, we observe that God the Father appears to be the one speaking creation into existence (“God said…”) and the Spirit of God is described as “hovering over the waters” (Genesis 1:2). However, the Son is not seen engaging in any form of activity in the narrative. This seems puzzling in light of John 1:1–3, which identifies the Word (the Son) as being present in the beginning and as the agent through whom all things were made, and Colossians 1:16, which states that all things were created through Him and for Him. Why doesn't Genesis include any mention or visible action of the Son in the creation account? How do Christian theologians reconcile this apparent absence with New Testament claims about the Son's role in creation?

According to dispensationalist theology, sin is not directly caused by Satan - though he plays a significant role in temptation and deception - but rather originates from humanity's free will. However, if Adam and Eve were created with free will and declared "very good" by God (Genesis 1:31), does this imply an inherent flaw in their design that free will itself be a vessel for sin? If so, how does Dispensationalism reconcile God's perfect creation with the capacity for rebellion embedded in it?

**Newly created Catholic Mass for the Care of Creation?** Apparently Pope Leo XIV inaugurated a new mass for the care of creation. This [source](https://www.catholicbishops.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Mass-for-Creation-Time..pdf) says the the Feast of Creation is September 1st (or for any other day in Creation Time, September 1st - October 4th). Concerning this new mass or feast, what is the reasoning behind this new mass and feast? What is it’s liturgical rank as a feast? And why these dates for the Feast of Creation? Any insights about this new mass would be greatly appreciated.

Do you know of any other books (besides those by John Sailhamer) that advocate for Historical Creationism?

According to Protestantism, why did God create humanity? I have been looking around this website for some Biblical verses, etc for some clues, but couldn't find any.

I would like to express some questions and points here regarding why God made this world as it is and not a world where humans could simply fly away at will. So, my main question to be brief is: Why did God create or willed reality in this way? That He allowed gravity in this level and not like other Mars, or why He didn’t allow us to be underwater creatures or flying ones. The thing that I’m struggling about here is the idea that God allowed us to have a choice; free will. Now what I have thought about is this: Do we really have free will if there are things that are naturally impossible for us to choose, therefore limiting our choices? Like you cannot choose between “flying” or “not flying”. You can only “not fly”. So can you really say “well, I still have free will” The answer that I have thought is “well, God has to set up some form of reality or limits. Otherwise, free will without limitations can include illogical conclusions such as existing and not existing at the same time” So okay, God creates a reality for us to live in: why this reality and not other realities? I apologize in advance if you think this is way too simple, lacking or so and so. But I hope you get the point.

I am not trying to be argumentative, this is an earnest question, as this question got me in huge trouble when I was growing up attending a southern baptist Christian middle school. This question (and people's reactions to it) is actually one of the things that lead my away from the church as a teenager (which I later came back to). If the speed of light is constant and we can see distant objects (stars, galaxies, etc) that are millions or billions of light years away how can we account for a young age of the universe? - My father, at that time, was convinced that the speed of light has been slowing down since the creation of the universe. Although, I have never seen any credible evidence of this, and it would seem that measurements taken at CERN (and elsewhere) would be seriously affected if the speed of light was not a constant. - My 8th grade science teacher said it was because objects used to be closer than they are now, and have moved away from each other over time. However, if the universe was only 10k years old, and two objects started next to each other and traveled away from each other at nearly the speed of light, the most distant objects in the universe would still only appear to be a little less then 10k light years away. - God creating the universe with photons in flight, making the distant universe (and therefore past events) only *appear* to be taking places (or even existing), is certainly deceptive and I cannot accept it. - Do YEC consider the age of the Universe and the age of the Earth two separate questions? My question isn't 'how old is the universe?', or 'did the big bang happen?', or 'creation vs evolution'. It is simply this: how do Christians, who are YEC, reconcile this? **Edit** Some have asked, why I cannot accept that God created photons in midflight giving the appearance of age? - In the [video series](http://www.answersingenesis.org/media/video/ondemand/distant-starlight) @SeanDowney posted below, the presenter speaking against this argument shows a star that is 150k light years away that we observed blowing up. So, if God created photons in midflight then for 8k years God has been showing us a star that never existed and showed us an event (the start being destroyed) that never took place. - This is a specious argument in general, because I can make the same argument that God created the universe 5 minutes ago and all the evidence to the contrary (physical evidence, our memories of the past, etc.) were all put in place to give the appearance of age. In both these cases, God making the universe appear to be billions of years old, instead of 5 minutes old, or the universe appearing to be billions of years old instead of 10k years, involves deception on the part of God that I cannot accept God (or my conception of him) would perpetrate.

> In contemporary philosophy, a **brute fact** is a fact that cannot be explained in terms of a deeper, more "fundamental" fact. There are two main ways to explain something: say what "brought it about", or describe it at a more "fundamental" level. For example, a cat displayed on a computer screen can be explained, more "fundamentally", in terms of certain voltages in bits of metal in the screen, which in turn can be explained, more "fundamentally", in terms of certain subatomic particles moving in a certain manner. If one were to keep explaining the world in this way and reach a point at which no more "deeper" explanations can be given, then one would have found some facts which are brute or inexplicable, in the sense that we cannot give them an ontological explanation. As it might be put, there may exist some things that just are. > > To reject the existence of brute facts is to think that everything can be explained ("Everything can be explained" is sometimes called the principle of sufficient reason). > > ... > > **Bertrand Russell took a brute fact position when he said, "I should say that the universe is just there, and that's all." Sean Carroll similarly concluded that "any attempt to account for the existence of something rather than nothing must ultimately bottom out in a set of brute facts; the universe simply is, without ultimate cause or explanation."** > > Source: [Brute fact - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brute_fact) Postulating that the universe *just is*, as a *brute fact*, devoid of an ultimate cause or explanation, is a viewpoint often embraced by naturalists and non-theists, exemplified by figures like [Sean Carroll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_M._Carroll) and [Bertrand Russell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell) . However, this notion runs contrary to the Christian faith's premise of a Creator God serving as the ultimate explanation for the universe's existence. How might a Christian effectively persuade a naturalist non-theist, such as Sean Carroll, that it is metaphysically impossible for the universe to be a brute fact? --- *Bonus for the interested reader with about one hour of free time*: [God is not a Good Theory (Sean Carroll)](https://youtu.be/ew_cNONhhKI)

Christians across denominations appear to believe the snake who tempted Eve in Eden was actually Satan. If the being who tempted Eve was actually Satan, why were snakes cursed to crawl on their bellies and eat dust for all time? Do Christians believe God knew the snake was actually Satan? Why do Christians believe snakes have moral culpability for what Satan did?

### Background Protestants who believe that the sin of Adam/Eve caused a fall in creation appear to believe some variation of the following : > The fall of man was caused by Adam’s sin. Sin is any human behavior, word, or thought that is contrary to the perfection of God. Because of Adam’s sin, God placed a curse upon the world, the people, the animals, the plants, and the very ground (Genesis 3:14–19). The idea of sin "entering the world" via Adam and Eve is also found in the NT: > Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned - Romans 5:12 ### Question If the sin of Adam and Eve caused the Fall of Creation and sin to enter the world, one could imagine had they not sinned the eternal fate of all humanity would hover on a knifes edge until someone else sinned. Do Christians believe there was something unique about Adam and Eve and their sin where they (and only they) could cause the fall?

People don't seem to believe in the firmament as a literal barrier of water up in the sky that collapsed at Noah's flood. I want to say they don't believe in the firmament *anymore*, but I am doubtful most creationists did. Why? Is it because it is too fantastical? The problem is that such a notion seems to correlate with Genesis and seems to make a lot of other considerations more swallowable, such as the feasibility of centuries old lifespan, adequate conditions to sustain large animal life (dinosaurs, etc), and adequate water for a sudden flood. The only "scientific" model I've heard, coming from Dr Carl Baugh, asserts that waters from the deep under the earth came up and cracked open the firmament; his model is the only creation model that solves so many fundamental problems for creationism I am literally, truly perplexed as to how his model has been seemingly abandoned by the creationist community. I know of no direct arguments against this sort of firmament, except only alternative interpretations of its mention in Genesis. What am I missing? -- It is the "canopy theory", I believe, that I had in mind in posting the question. My own only exposure to this was from a presentation by Dr Carl Baugh and by reading his old book, Panorama of Creation. I have had difficulty finding *anyone* endorsing his model, and his model is the only one that answers several questions. My frustration comes out of watching modern depictions via illustrations, 3D graphics, and simulated film artwork, attempting to use fine detail to tell what Genesis earth was like but not filling in these gaps. Blue skies, clouds, rainbows, all post-Noah, all completely against Baugh's model. Does it matter? In an age when modern illustrations like Hollywood are referenced in dialogue with apologetics and truth seekers, yes, I believe so.

According to Catholic theologians, did God create create female animals from their male counterparts, as he created Eve from the rib of Adam (Gn. 2:22 )? Or did He create the first male/female pair of each animal species* simultaneously? *"according to their kinds" (Gn. 1:21-25 )

What in the Bible makes people think that time has a beginning? I understand that Genesis says, "In the beginning....", but we use that expression for many things, such as "In the beginning, Mary thought that John was...." Gen.1:1 is not the beginning of everything. It is certainly not the beginning of God. It probably wasn't the beginning of Jesus. It probably wasn't the beginning of the angels (see Job 38:4-7 below that *seems* to imply that the morning stars and the sons of God pre-exist Gen 1:1). So why believe it was the beginning of time? Or why believe time has a beginning? Job 38:4-7 (KJV): >4 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. > >5 Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? > >6 Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; 7 **When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God** shouted for joy?

Genesis says that we were ***created by God*** from Dust and God's power. (Genesis 1-2) The theory of evolution says there was ***no transcendent Cause***, and we eventually evolved from apes randomly. Does this show that evolutionary science and biblical religion cannot coexist with each other? What are the answers to this question from the viewpoint of Evangelical Christianity? Do evangelicals who hold to the inspiration of the Bible believe that Moses's statement about Creation disproves the "causitory" aspect of the universe put forth by evolutionists?

Considering the whole umbrella of Christendom including Eastern Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Coptic Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Protestant, Pentecostal, Abyssinian, has there been any acceptance of people as true "Christian" who refuse to believe in Creation by a God? Can a person, in any of these streams of Christianity, deny the part of the Creeds mentioning Creation, and still be considered legitimate members of the Christian Church? Still be called Christian? Is ***Creation of the universe by a God*** considered an *essential belief*, or a non-essential? This question totally ignores "how" a Creation was carried out; it sets aside the discussion of the "manner or method" of said Creation! Or is this a ***universal prerequisite"*** (along with perhaps other beliefs or doctrines)? ***Verses to consider to help in answering this***: >Thus saith God the LORD, He who created the heavens and stretched them out; He who spread forth the earth, and that which comes out of it; He who gives breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them who walk therein. (Isaiah 42:5) >Giving thanks to the Father...Who has delivered us from the power of darkness, and has translated us into the Kingdom of His dear Son...For by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible...all things were created by Him, and for Him. (Colossians 1:12-16)