Let's not debate creationism in the News thread
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God: "Hey, can you go make this circle thing around this size, guys?"
Human: "Oh sure, I guess this should be close enough. Here, I'll just log it down here, and..."Two thousand years later:
Some human somewhere: "IT WAS WRITTEN THAT CIRCLES HAVE THE EXACT PROPORTIONS WRITTEN IN THE BOOK! MATHEMATICS IS A LIE!"
I mean, I'd take measurements written down 200 years ago with a grain of salt.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
If I may, I'd like to alter your last statement to read "believes that God created the universe,
in accordance with whatin a way that produces results matching what archaeologists and astronomers have observed."Yeah, it was bad worse choice.
@Gurth said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
That’s easy enough to disprove with, say, access to some of the original text and a suitable dictionary.
Nope. There is no suitable dictionary, because the dictionary you're using wasn't written under divine providence. You've got to think like the fundies do! I know it's hard to do, but when you finally invoke their inner demented dogma, you'll see how every argument against their belief is indisputably flawed because your arguments are the work of The Devil.
@Gurth said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Oh, wait … But how does he figure this jives with “anyone who translated it did so through divine intervention”?
No, no, no, no... see, all those other translators were frauds who did it without God behind his shoulder whispering everything in his native tongue.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Evolution (especially in it's post-Darwinian forms with punctuated evolution etc) is a hacked-together mess at the fundamental level.
That's a weird thing to say. Evolution at it's most fundamental is really simple and general, and perhaps even elegant. The implementation details for Earth biology are a hackish mess, yes, but that's also what evolution predicts to occur most of the time. The same thing is observed when applied to evolutionary programming (or whatever it's called where you generate optimized things by making, tasting, selecting, and recombining): simple and general concept, with the results often looking rather hackish, but effective.
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@Dreikin said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
The same thing is observed when applied to evolutionary programming (or whatever it's called where you generate optimized things by making, tasting, selecting, and recombining): simple and general concept, with the results often looking rather hackish, but effective.
Genetic algorithms
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@Dreikin said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Evolution at it's most fundamental is really simple and general, and perhaps even elegant. The implementation details for Earth biology are a hackish mess, yes, but that's also what evolution predicts to occur most of the time.
It's emergent complexity from a simple rule set. You can see the same thing in Conway's game of life or many examples of chaos theory
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@Dreikin It's not the concept I don't like, it's the implementation. Change over time, great. It's the curlicues that have been required to get these specific organisms to fit the theory. I just keep thinking that there's something else, that we're missing something. Not enough to really care, and if I had to deal with it every day I might care more. Totally not on my list of things that matter to me.
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@Polygeekery said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
I thought it was Pi = 3?
1 Kings 7:23 ESV - Then he made the sea of cast… | Biblia
Then he made the sea of cast metal. It was round, ten cubits from brim to brim, and five cubits high, and a line of thirty cubits measured its...
Here's proof that the illuminati wrote the bible! If you add the definition in that chapter (3) to the reciprocal ratio made from the chapter number (so 23/7), then divide that by two, you get ~3.14.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
I expect a professor to say "I understand that some of you don't agree. That's fine, but you will be tested and graded on the material as presented." I expect them to say that on any topic
Why is it fine? Why should it be said on any topic? Students are there to absorb the professor's knowledge, not to politely listen while ignoring anything they don't like.
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@coldandtired Professors are not all-knowing gods who spill their knowledge on lesser folks. In fact, most of the professors I had were very knowledgeable about their (very) specific area and knew crap about the rest. A QM specialist talking about general relativity really doesn't know much more than the students do. And many of them were crappy teachers at that.
As a teacher, I'm offended when people think that I can just pour knowledge into some student's head. They have to think for themselves. If you tell them "just listen to me and accept what I say," a) they don't. b) They learn bad habits. Active thinking and questioning and, yes, making mistakes are a necessary part of learning.
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@Benjamin-Hall Toby faire, at the very early levels there are points where it's appropriate to say "I know this may sound weird, but just accept it for now, and it'll make sense later on when you have more understanding of the big picture." But in general... yeah. What you said.
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@masonwheeler Yes, but those are usually process things--"why are we doing it this way?" as opposed to accepting/rejecting concepts. Also, pulling that requires a pre-existing trust between student and teacher. Telling people "you're wrong" (with an implicit "idiot" thrown in there) shatters that trust and makes it impossible for the student to learn from that teacher. Hence the need to say explicitly "you may disagree and I won't belittle you for disagreeing" while still maintaining standards. "Disagree, but at least do me the courtesy of having good arguments for your disagreement."
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Professors are not all-knowing gods
No, they are experts in their field, which is literally what the name means.
@Benjamin-Hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
They have to think for themselves.
This is in no way the same as 'I already know better than the expert speaking so I can ignore it.
@Benjamin-Hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
just listen to me and accept what I say,
There are many areas where this is appropriate and the norm.
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@coldandtired said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Professors are not all-knowing gods
No, they are experts in their field, which is literally what the name means.
Theoretically. I've had some excellent professors, some OK professors, and one where I dropped the class after a week or so because it became very obvious very quickly that he had very little in the way of cluefulness on the subject, and I knew it better than he did. (Not being arrogant; it was about computer stuff that I had been doing for years and years, and a lot of the stuff he presented was Just Plain Wrong.)
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@coldandtired I hate to pull the appeal to authority card here, but I've taught both at the college level and at the high school level. Let me tell you--if a teacher has to say "shut up and listen" or any words to that effect, they've lost the game already. Yes, the teacher has to set standards and set what is being tested. That's what gives the basest incentive for the students to listen. He or she also must allow students to learn for themselves. Without this you get people who are credentialed, but not educated.
It is impossible to compel anyone to listen. They may be present, they may be silent, but their brains are off. I spent a good chunk of school like that. Teachers who are open to questioning and debate teach the material better than those who demand obeisance.
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@masonwheeler And in most cases at the university level, "their field" is a very very narrow slice of knowledge. You may be an expert in one 15-year period in the military history of Poland (to pull a random example). Doesn't mean you know any more than a well-read layman about the rest of the world and the rest of the timeline.
For example, I had an "earth science" teacher in high-school. His background was as a forest ranger. By about 3 weeks in I knew more than he did. He even acknowledged it and would pass class questions my way on occasion.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
I hate to pull the appeal to authority card here
That would be a bad idea.
@Benjamin-Hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
if a teacher has to say "shut up and listen" or any words to that effect, they've lost the game already.
You're confusing shitty teaching with authoritative knowledge. Your original claim was that professors should explain in advance that students have every right to disagree with the material, no matter the topic.
While that may be true for more 'controversial' subjects, there are plenty where there is a flow of information in one direction. Would the preamble be needed if the lesson were on 'The Finnish Accusative Case', or 'The Tensile Strength of Concrete'?
@Benjamin-Hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
You may be an expert in one 15-year period in the military history of Poland
And you should still think for yourself if you go to this expert's lecture, 'The Military History of Poland, 1922-1937'?
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@masonwheeler said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Theoretically. I've had some excellent professors, some OK professors, and one where I dropped the class after a week
There are always bad practitioners, but in general the situation should be that the teacher/professor knows more than the student, and, unless it's a very open-ended topic, the expert's knowledge should be assumed to be correct.
Of course, he or she might not be able to convey that knowledge effectively, but that's another matter.
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@coldandtired said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
You're confusing shitty teaching with authoritative knowledge. Your original claim was that professors should explain in advance that students have every right to disagree with the material, no matter the topic.
Yes. They have every right. That's inherent in being human. Denying that is stupid. No matter what the rules are, no matter what the policies, difference in knowledge, etc is, you have the right to disagree no matter what. Acknowledging that helps build trust. Note the second part of my statement--although you can disagree, you get graded and tested based on mastering what's presented.
While that may be true for more 'controversial' subjects, there are plenty where there is a flow of information in one direction. Would the preamble be needed if the lesson were on 'The Finnish Accusative Case', or 'The Tensile Strength of Concrete'?
Absolutely. I've had professors screw up such basic things before. One-way flows of information happen whether you want them to or not. Very few people will disagree with a table of constants. Except when they should. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_drop_experiment Note that it took quite a while for people to overcome their "well, he's smart, he must be right" tendency and get the correct answer.
@Benjamin-Hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
You may be an expert in one 15-year period in the military history of Poland
And you should still think for yourself if you go to this expert's lecture, 'The Military History of Poland, 1922-1937'?
Expert
=/=right. Everyone should always think for themselves. Often that involves deciding to accept someone else's judgement. Knowing when and how to defer is an important skill that we don't teach enough. There are many times when you can't/shouldn't/mustn't defer (and others when you should defer).Edit: I've seen huge glaring errors in textbooks. My best professors were the ones to tell me "don't trust what you see, especially if you think it's right. Question everything. If you think it's right, question it more." That's the way we learn. Sometimes, after questioning, we decide we were right the first time. Now you're sure. Blind acceptance of anything is a poor way of thinking.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Expert = / = right.
For most people and most situations, an expert is right, which is why they are an expert.
@Benjamin-Hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Everyone should always think for themselves. Often that involves deciding to accept someone else's judgement. Knowing when and how to defer is an important skill that we don't teach enough.
In order to disagree with an expert you have to be an expert yourself, otherwise unless there is a clear mistake you're just guessing. I'm sure there are many people all over the world who ignore doctors, lawyers, architects, etc. and occasionally there's a story about how one man's Internet search was right while the doctors were wrong, but the fact that this makes the news should be telling.
I have no problem with students offering me their versions, usually in the form of, 'But my friend told me...'. I take issue with the concept of every expert, in every field, adding a disclaimer.
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@coldandtired That sounds like ego talking. I enjoy being questioned and have learned a lot from students' questions, even the stupid ones. Now, of course, if a student is being disruptive I request that they see me at another time to discuss it. If they refuse, then I can remove them for being disruptive. Same with someone who is talking on their cell phone during class.
I was at a conference earlier this year--one of the talks the guy had significant data showing that one of the teaching methods that works best it to have students face their own misconceptions. Have them make predictions, ask questions, show doubt. Then work them through the process. That way, when they learn something it sticks. They've taken ownership of it. Just telling them "trust me, it's true" doesn't work at all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzUEL7vw60U : "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."
Humility in a teacher goes a long way to helping students want to listen to them.
Oh, and experts aren't right. Deferral to "experts" is intellectual suicide most of the time. Experts exist to be resources, not to be authorities. This is doubly true in squishier areas of life. A doctor can advise, a teacher can claim--the patient/student is in control of their own health/learning.
This is especially true when it comes to the law. It's stupid easy to find "experts" who will testify to anything if their fees are paid. People go to prison for crimes they didn't commit because "experts" used dodgy methods or were outright frauds. Many forensic techniques today are questionable despite the practitioners being "experts." http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a4548/4325797/
to disagree with an expert you must be an expert
Nope. There's a reason for the saying "out of the mouth of babes." Sometimes experts get so full of their own biases that they can't see the truth sitting in front of them.
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What data do you think creationists ignore?
How about the mountains of evidence that the universe is billions of years old?
"And I have mountains and oceans of evidence that shows that the universe must be very young." Simply making broad claims is not debating. Be specific. Even posting a link is at least something.
Pretty much the entire fossil record, which some creationists claim was deliberately placed there by God because He's a massive troll
And I think those creationists are at least as kooky as you think they are.
Noah's Flood easily accounts for most of the fossils, and other (recent) natural events like volcanic eruptions easily account for the rest. They also explain the existence of "anachronistic" fossils and artifacts, which evolutionists/old-earthers are very careful to ignore.Basically, you're up against the whole of Cosmology.
This is a claim that is only slightly better than the first one above, and only in that you mention a particular topic to which I can respond. But it is still very broad and so responding to it properly is difficult without a lot of time. I will note, however, that the term Cosmology can include philosophical/religious/metaphysical thought, beliefs, and traditions as well as the physical fields of astronomy and physics. I'll get to physical cosmology in a bit.
Biology rules out a 6000 years old world through various mechanisms. Even ignoring evolution and genetic analysis, the amount of evidence we have for species that have died off would require that species go extinct at an incredible rate, but ancient records (from the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Chinese and the like, thousands of years old) don't mention any of the currently extinct species. And no, the flood doesn't account for it because the book being interpreted literally says Noah saved a breeding pair of each species. It doesn't say that God decided some species would drown and some would be saved.
A breeding pair for all the "unclean" kinds doesn't mean that every "species" was saved. (Seven of each "clean" kind were also kept, presumably to have something to sacrifice and/or eat.) And it means that all the rest of each of those kinds of creatures would drown and/or be quickly buried and fossilized. I think a lot of mythology refers to many extinct creatures, but that the historical reporting of them became tainted by "artistic license" to the types of outlandish animals that persist in the extant accounts of those myths.
The physics involved in fossilization on the scales that we see, and the existence of most of the rock layers actually demand that those have been settled by a massive deluge. Many of the fossils (term?) of creatures frozen in glaciers had to have been flooded while they were still alive and then frozen extremely quickly. They hadn't drowned; many were in the middle of eating. Drowning animals don't bother to keep eating as they struggle to breathe.
Cosmology has the background cosmic radiation as a starting point, and a bunch of other models for how planets are formed that require extremely long timescales.
- How do they know that the background radiation is not just distorted/dispersed reflections or refractions of radiation from all the other radiating bodies in space?
- Instant creation doesn't need long timescales for planets/other celestial bodies to develop. This borders on Last Thursdayism, though, so it's not really the best argument when discussing the physical processes.
- Gravitational lensing and how it might distort time is not usually considered in physical-cosmological arguments (at least, in the ones I've seen). If time within a gravity well appears to slow down in relation to an observer outside that well (which matches observations with atomic clocks at different altitudes), and, vice versa, that time outside the well appears to pass more quickly outside the well to an observer deep within it; then couldn't it be possible that the stars are millions or billions of years old, but the earth itself is only a few thousand? (And that is without saying anything of the possible amplification of an observer deep within one gravity well observing something deep within another gravity well.)
Geology shows evidence of sedimentary layers helping to gauge how old something is, with fossils of a given era for example always showing up in the same layers, even when those layers extrude out of the ground from seismic activity. Tectonic plate activity also shows evidence that, for example, Africa and America once were the same continent, and it would have taken much longer than 6000 years for tectonic drift to put them where they are.
Showing that Africa and South America fit together relies on the distortion of certain rectangular map projections. The actual sizes don't fit that well.
As I noted above, the fact that there are so many sedimentary layers distributed all over the planet actually demands flooding, with water's ability to sort sediment (and/or repeated volcanic activity to form volcanic layers). If these exist pretty much everywhere on the planet, either we've had a whole lot of major floods or One Big Flood, right?
As for why fossils tend to appear in the same layers, a flood would sort the creatures by bouyancy, swimming ability, natural swimming depth, and intelligence. Animals that are dense, bad swimmers, deep swimmers (or sea floor crawlers), and dumb tend to be in lower layers than creatures that are light, good swimmers, surface swimmers, or smart.
So, on the one hand you have multiple independent disciplines all reaching the same conclusions and using those to advance their fields even further, and on the other you have a group of people either ignoring or arguing for special circumstances to justify the evidence. Evolution is just a tiny portion of a vast body of interlocking knowledge that supports each other. It's not just "Creationism vs Evolution".
I've found that evolution tends to play a really big role, regardless of where the age of the earth argument starts. Also, the correct parallelism would be create/evolve, creation/evolution, or creationism/evolutionism. Creationism and evolutionism are both explanations and interpretations of observed data to fit within each one's particular philosophical worldview. "Young-earthers" argue that "old-earthers" ignore or argue for special circumstances in order to justify their arguments, so that works both ways. In order to judge between them, we need to see (1) the data itself, (2) the philosophical underpinnings of each position, and (3) how the philosophy affects the interpretations of the data.
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@remi said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@RaceProUK said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
What data do you think creationists ignore?
Pretty much the entire fossil record, which some creationists claim was deliberately placed there by God because He's a massive troll
I'd be interested to know how they handle all the radioactive decay isotope dating methods, apart from introducing weird and totally unsupported hypothesis (that is, only supported in the sense that they are needed in order to avoid getting older ages) such as saying that the decay constants changed over time.
The primary issue I have with radiometric dating methods is that they require an assumption that all of the daughter elements are results of the parent element. I.e. the lead in a sample containing both lead and uranium is assumed to have all originally been uranium. The problem with that is that we actually don't know what the composition of the original sample was, and we don't know whether it has gained or lost any of either element in the intervening time.
Another issue is that they don't work on small scales (anything less than a few thousand years). Samples from a currently living creature have been variously dated as a few decades old, a few thousand years old, some dozens of thousands of years old, or a couple millions of years old.
Another issue is the margins of error that are included. If something is dated to 1.43 billion years old, but the margin is 0.4%, that sounds really good, right? But that range is still 12.298 million years. That's an incredibly long time difference no matter how accurate you may think the measurement was.@dkf said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@remi said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
I'd be interested to know how they handle all the radioactive decay isotope dating methods
Since the basic hypothesis they're using isn't technically distinguishable from Last Thursdayism, I suggest not trying to find that out.
"God created it to look like it was billions of years old!"
Sure, it's possible that He could have done that. But whether He did or not is more of a question of "would He?" before it becomes a question of "did He?" And that is a philosophical/theological question, not a scientific question.
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@wharrgarbl said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
What does it matter whether a student thinks the universe is 6 thousand or 6 billion years old? Will that affect his life in meaningful ways? Will it prevent her from understanding how science works? Will it prevent him from being a good researcher, should he choose to go that route?
If someone insists the universe is 6 thousand years old despite having an education, it shows this person fails to understand science and can't be a good researcher, so yes.
Besides the point that his interpretation of the data may be just as valid (I would say better) in that particular area, it wouldn't necessarily affect his ability to perform research in that or other areas. E.g. Johannes Kepler was a devout Christian, and he made some of the most important advances in astronomy.
Furthermore, a skeptic always has value, even if only to ensure that other researchers do their due diligence in order to defend their hypotheses. A desire to eliminate challengers is a quick way to stagnation.
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@antiquarian said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@RaceProUK said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
because He's a massive troll
He is though. He could have put the Tree of Knowledge somewhere where Adam and Eve couldn't get to it if He didn't want them eating the fruit.
Or he decided that a real opportunity for them to choose to love was worth the risk of them choosing to hate and better than simply have everything be choiceless automata.
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@djls45 How old do you believe Earth and the universe are?
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@sloosecannon said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@asdf said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@Rhywden said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
The Theologists I know actually have no problem with science because they are quite smart and have no problem with science coming to a different conclusion than the religious material they're studying.
Because they're not Fundamentalists.QFT.
Precisely. This only becomes a problem when people start thinking everything in their preferred religious text is 100% true, disregarding the fact that most of it is hyperbole and story telling to make specific ethical points.
If the Author claims that it is all true, then it's the epitome of hypocrisy to claim to follow it while also attempting to dismantle and ignore what it says.
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@Polygeekery said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@masonwheeler said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Funny thing is, this is the exact same argument the creationists use against evolutionists.
The only "evidence" that creationists have to disprove evolutionists is the bible. That is a religious text, not science.
Really, everyone has and uses the same evidence. Creationists just have a different interpretation of the evidence than evolutionists.
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@Adynathos said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@djls45 Cosmology, evolution and divine creation are not contradictory - and the Pope agrees.
Pope Francis: evolution and creation both right
Pope Francis cautions against portraying God as magician, and says it is possible to believe in evolution and creation
Oh, look! A hypcrite!
BTW, the Catholic Church doesn't believe or teach the authority of the Bible as the rule for faith and practice. They've developed their own rituals and authority structure separate from what the Bible directs. That's what the main point of the Protestant Reformation was: to try to get the Catholic Church to return to the authority of Scripture.“The big bang, which is today posited as the origin of the world, does not contradict the divine act of creation; rather, it requires it,” the pope said in an address to a meeting at the pontifical academy of sciences.
Paraphrased: "The Big Bang requires a Creator." So apparently the pope subscribes to the Blind Watchmaker scenario...?
“Evolution of nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation because evolution presupposes the creation of beings which evolve.”
Again, paraphrased: "God created creatures that can evolve." While itself certainly possible -- God could have created the original instance of "life" and allowed (or guided) it to evolve -- evolution is not necessary to explain the biological variety that we have, and that position brings in a whole lot of other philosophical and religious conundrums and contradictions. E.g. if death came into the world by sin, yet sin didn't enter the world until Adam (Romans 5:12a), then how was it possible that so many creatures could have died before Adam came onto the scene?
“When we read the creation story in Genesis we run the risk of imagining that God was a magician, with a magic wand which is able to do everything,” he said.
This could simply be taken as a warning against picture-thinking (see also the Third Commandment) or irreverence.
But it seems more likely, given the context, that he's displaying his hypocrisy of claiming to be a (the) Christian leader, yet denying the authority of the very basis of his (supposed) faith.“But it is not so. He created beings and let them develop according to internal laws which He gave every one, so they would develop, so they would reach maturity.”
Again, this could just be expressing amazement at the intricate detail that God put into creating creatures that could reproduce and grow from single-celled zygotes to adults with billions of cells.
But, given the context, he seems to be further expressing his hypocrisy.
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@dkf said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
second (?) cousins
"X"th cousin "Y" removed:
"X" = how many generations "up" to get to siblings (least count if there is a difference)
"Y" = how many generations difference between the speaker and the cousinYour first cousin is your parent's sibling's child.
Your second cousin is your grandparent's sibling's grandchild.
Your first cousin once removed is your grandparent's sibling's child or your parent's sibling's grandchild.
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@Fox said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
What does it matter whether a student thinks the universe is 6 thousand or 6 billion years old? Will that affect his life in meaningful ways? Will it prevent her from understanding how science works? Will it prevent him from being a good researcher, should he choose to go that route?
It matters because if a student wholeheartedly abandons the scientific method any time religion has something to say about the topic at hand, that will drastically hinder their ability to participate in any scientific discussions, research, or other endeavors.
I think you'll find quite the opposite if you look at religious scientists throughout history. They search with more motivation because they want to learn how the Creator configured the universe.
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@RaceProUK said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Editit: I've now tracked down the supposed Biblical source for π being 3 (not 3.2) - Chronicles 4:2-5.
This is the King James translation version:
Also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and five cubits the height thereof; and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.
Which, let's be honest, is vague enough to disregard it as proof π == 3.
Right. Hammering this square peg into the "π == 3" round hole ignores the width of the brim. When that is accounted for, a reasonable approximation of π is calculable.
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@MZH said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
I just plug π into my calculator if I want to use it, and it has whatever precision my calculator supports, which is usually more than I need. :D
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@asdf said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@Jaloopa said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Note that this thread is rather free of creationists since setting off the fuse.
They know that they cannot win this argument. But they do not realize that it's because their "opinion" is completely invalid if you take a closer look at it. In their eyes, we simply want to ridicule their faith. So they go back to their filter bubble, more determined than ever to never accept the fact that evolution and the scientific calculations regarding the age of the universe are the most plausible explanation.
That's funny, because I could say almost exactly the same thing about "old-earthers". The only difference is that I don't usually try to ridicule them for their beliefs.
As for whether it's the most plausible, I suppose that depends on whether one is a theist or atheist. Atheism requires something like the Big Bang and billions of years to try to explain the origins of the universe. Theism can include that narrative (and many do), but a literal understanding of the Biblical narrative posits a young age for the universe (or mixed age, as I noted earlier).
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@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@sloosecannon said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@asdf said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@Rhywden said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
The Theologists I know actually have no problem with science because they are quite smart and have no problem with science coming to a different conclusion than the religious material they're studying.
Because they're not Fundamentalists.QFT.
Precisely. This only becomes a problem when people start thinking everything in their preferred religious text is 100% true, disregarding the fact that most of it is hyperbole and story telling to make specific ethical points.
If the Author claims that it is all true, then it's the epitome of hypocrisy to claim to follow it while also attempting to dismantle and ignore what it says.
Indeed, but unfortunately it seems to be very difficult to get the Author to make a statement on this matter. Excluding of course, the book itself. Which becomes a chicken-or-
eggchicken problem - "It's true because it says it is!"Of course, the version of the book I subscribe to makes no such claim, thus meaning this entire discussion is moot.
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@masonwheeler said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@remi said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Still, one thing is to try and show how you can reconcile science and religion. Another is to accept, or let people say, things that are factually wrong and contradict what can be scientifically deduced. I'm all for having philosophical discussions about who pushed the switch of the Big Bang, but I'll rebuke and ridicule anyone who says the universe is 6000 years old.
The way I figure it, Genesis describes six creative periods, in which different features of the world were laid out, in an order that makes perfect sense assuming an observer standing on the surface of the planet. (Which was the only POV imaginable to a culture with no tradition of science fiction.) It says that each phase of creation "was called" the nth day, which is a rather unique phrasing; if something is a day as we typically understand it, we just say it "was" a day rather than "was called" a day.
At no point does it say that each "day" lasted 24 hours, or that each "day" took exactly as long as all the other "days". Therefore, any theory that assumes either of these principles can be safely disregarded without any theological danger.
One problem with this interpretation of the Biblical narrative is that it puts the creation of the sun, moon, and stars after the creation of plant life.
Another is that it ignores the phrasing "evening and morning," which indicate a normal 24-hour period of time. The actual Hebrew phrase is "there was evening and there was morning, one day."
Their culture did have the concept of story narratives that had a sequence of events.
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@xaade said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@wharrgarbl said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
If someone insists the universe is 6 thousand years old despite having an education, it shows this person fails to understand science and can't be a good researcher, so yes.
Genesis is ambiguous about that, on purpose.
It lists how long God decided to take to create the world, when Adam was created, how long Adam lived and when he had kids, how long they lived and when they had kids, etc. down to other events that we can date fairly precisely, which puts the creation approximately 6,000 years ago. Any ambiguity is a result of trying to force the Biblical narrative to fit some other philosophical worldview instead of letting it stand for itself.
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@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@Adynathos said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@djls45 Cosmology, evolution and divine creation are not contradictory - and the Pope agrees.
Pope Francis: evolution and creation both right
Pope Francis cautions against portraying God as magician, and says it is possible to believe in evolution and creation
Oh, look! A hypcrite!
BTW, the Catholic Church doesn't believe or teach the authority of the Bible as the rule for faith and practice. They've developed their own rituals and authority structure separate from what the Bible directs. That's what the main point of the Protestant Reformation was: to try to get the Catholic Church to return to the authority of Scripture.Well. That's not actually true... the Catholic Church just has more sources of truth than just a single book.
“The big bang, which is today posited as the origin of the world, does not contradict the divine act of creation; rather, it requires it,” the pope said in an address to a meeting at the pontifical academy of sciences.
Paraphrased: "The Big Bang requires a Creator." So apparently the pope subscribes to the Blind Watchmaker scenario...?
“Evolution of nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation because evolution presupposes the creation of beings which evolve.”
Again, paraphrased: "God created creatures that can evolve." While itself certainly possible -- God could have created the original instance of "life" and allowed (or guided) it to evolve -- evolution is not necessary to explain the biological variety that we have, and that position brings in a whole lot of other philosophical and religious conundrums and contradictions. E.g. if death came into the world by sin, yet sin didn't enter the world until Adam (Romans 5:12a), then how was it possible that so many creatures could have died before Adam came onto the scene?
Because the "Truth" of that story is not the literal fact of Adam and Eve, but rather the religious truth in the story.
“When we read the creation story in Genesis we run the risk of imagining that God was a magician, with a magic wand which is able to do everything,” he said.
This could simply be taken as a warning against picture-thinking (see also the Third Commandment) or irreverence.
But it seems more likely, given the context, that he's displaying his hypocrisy of claiming to be a (the) Christian leader, yet denying the authority of the very basis of his (supposed) faith.“But it is not so. He created beings and let them develop according to internal laws which He gave every one, so they would develop, so they would reach maturity.”
Again, this could just be expressing amazement at the intricate detail that God put into creating creatures that could reproduce and grow from single-celled zygotes to adults with billions of cells.
But, given the context, he seems to be further expressing his hypocrisy.I like how you feel like it's OK to call people hypocritical because you just don't understand (or refuse to understand) their interpretation of a religious text.
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@MZH said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@djls45 How old do you believe Earth and the universe are?
I believe that the earth and the solar system is between 5,000 and 10,000 years old, but probably closer to 6,000.
If the gravity well/time distortion thing I mentioned earlier is true, then the rest of the universe could be several billion years old, from our perspective here on earth. If not, then it's the same age as the earth.
Essentially, I am a young-earth Biblical creationist.
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@coldandtired said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
There are always bad practitioners, but in general the situation should be that the teacher/professor knows more than the student, and, unless it's a very open-ended topic, the expert's knowledge should be assumed to be correct.
Have none of you ever had professors who made mistakes when they were going through things? Because that happened in my courses quite frequently.
Of course sometimes things were obviously wrong, sometimes they didn't look right but I couldn't tell for sure, and sometimes they were right but I just didn't understand something. And sometimes stuff which seemed to be in the first category was actually in the second or third category. :) But the good thing is that by asking politely about it, you could get either a correction of the error, or an explanation of the thing you didn't understand, and either way you were better off.
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@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
It lists how long God decided to take to create the world
It uses ambiguous version of "day" for that. Something that people have to bend over backwards to prove means 24 hours. Something about "counted days are 24 hours because that's the only way we've seen it used" when we don't have many examples to go by in the first place.
@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
how long Adam lived and when he had kids, how long they lived and when they had kids, etc. down to
Nope. There could be gaps in the lineage. Again, a literal 6000 year interpretation requires the logic that a detail about the genealogy makes it somehow different from other genealogies where we KNOW generations were skipped. This is not a guarantee. Sorry. Just because the age of the person at the birth of their child is mentioned, does not mean that we know for certain the next person is their child, when other genealogies skip people, which we can demonstrate by looking elsewhere in the Bible that includes those skipped generations.
We know
- The bible skips generations.
- Yom is not specifically 24 hours.
- "A day is like a 1000 years."
Those things are certain.
Details have to be implied to break those conventions in order to prove a 6000 year old Earth.
Besides which, why is there even a lineage from Abraham to Noah, or from Noah to Adam. It serves no purpose unless there were other humans on earth that didn't descend from Adam. If the purpose is to give us a date range, then why not specify it? Because it's ambiguous on purpose.
The point isn't to argue with atheists over how old the Earth is, because God is risking someone making a bad interpretation and being proven wrong by physical evidence. The point is the spiritual implications of sin and salvation.
The genealogies are there to serve prophecies about Christ, and to confirm Jesus is the Christ. Anything more is putting a lot of risk on unnecessary detail.
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@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Gravitational lensing and how it might distort time is not usually considered in physical-cosmological arguments (at least, in the ones I've seen). If time within a gravity well appears to slow down in relation to an observer outside that well (which matches observations with atomic clocks at different altitudes), and, vice versa, that time outside the well appears to pass more quickly outside the well to an observer deep within it; then couldn't it be possible that the stars are millions or billions of years old, but the earth itself is only a few thousand? (And that is without saying anything of the possible amplification of an observer deep within one gravity well observing something deep within another gravity well.)
First, gravitational lensing is something different than what you describe. It's when the gravity from some matter (very massive "some matter) bends the light around itself and thereby acts as a lens. It's essentially a specific relativistic effect. Time is also affected by gravity, which is another relativistic effect. Both effects stem from gravity (or the distortion of space-time, if you wish), but the term gravitational lensing refers to a very specific effect.
That doesn't affect you argument. But ... we know the extent of the gravitational well that we're in (based on us not being pancaked into degenerate matter, on the orbits of the celestial bodies, and on the shapes of galaxies). And it's not massive enough for your argument to work. By far.
Atheism requires something like the Big Bang and billions of years to try to explain the origins of the universe.
Atheism doesn't require us to do anything. In fact, it works just fine without even arguing about the origins of the universe.
Another issue is the margins of error that are included. If something is dated to 1.43 billion years old, but the margin is 0.4%, that sounds really good, right? But that range is still 12.298 million years. That's an incredibly long time difference no matter how accurate you may think the measurement was.
Something that's dated 1.43 billion years old with an error margin of 0.4% (I'll take your word that that's 12.3 million years) is still more than 1.4 billion years old even with the worst error inside of that margin. So ... not sure what your argument is w.r.t that.
(Being off by 1cm^2 is the same as being of by 10^18 megabarns. That's an incredibly huge number, no matter how accurate you may think the initial measurement was. Think about that the next time you look at the size of an apartment. Conversions to square-furlongs are left to the reader.)
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@xaade said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
It lists how long God decided to take to create the world
It uses ambiguous version of "day" for that. Something that people have to bend over backwards to prove means 24 hours. Something about "counted days are 24 hours because that's the only way we've seen it used" when we don't have many examples to go by in the first place.
@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
how long Adam lived and when he had kids, how long they lived and when they had kids, etc. down to
Nope. There could be gaps in the lineage. Again, a literal 6000 year interpretation requires the logic that a detail about the genealogy makes it somehow different from other genealogies where we KNOW generations were skipped. This is not a guarantee. Sorry. Just because the age of the person at the birth of their child is mentioned, does not mean that we know for certain the next person is their child, when other genealogies skip people, which we can demonstrate by looking elsewhere in the Bible that includes those skipped generations.
Even skipping generations only allows extending the age up to ~10,000 years ago.
We know
- The bible skips generations.
But not in this instance, as we can tell from other passages that relate this particular list. Also, different people within the same genealogy can have the same name.
- Yom is not specifically 24 hours.
"Yom" is used in exactly the same ways as "day". Usually it means a 24-hour period of time, especially when used in the singular or with an ordinal number. It can be an indeterminate amount of time or another particular non-24-hour moment, but then it usually appears in a phrase that clearly delineates that metaphorical use.
Especially the phrasing of "evening and morning" indicates a regular 24-hour day.- "A day is like a 1000 years."
(8) But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
(9) The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
2 Peter 3:8-9The main point of this passage is not to define a day as being equivalent to a millennium with a Greek text so that the Hebrew text can mean something in order to fit a certain worldview.
The main point is to show that God is outside our perspective of time, and that though it may seem to some people like He is lazy in fulfilling His promises, He is really just patiently waiting so that as many as want to will repent.Details have to be implied to break those conventions in order to prove a 6000 year old Earth.
On the contrary, it takes a long of wrangling to mash an old-earth interpretation onto the text.
Besides which, why is there even a lineage from Abraham to Noah, or from Noah to Adam. It serves no purpose unless there were other humans on earth that didn't descend from Adam. If the purpose is to give us a date range, then why not specify it? Because it's ambiguous on purpose.
The foundations of the story are important. The rest of the Bible and God's dealings with mankind, specifically the Jews, don't make sense except in light of the narrative in the beginning of Genesis (the book of beginnings).
The point isn't to argue with atheists over how old the Earth is, because God is risking someone making a bad interpretation and being proven wrong by physical evidence.
But allegorizing or "spiritualizing" the Creation account (and really, the rest of Genesis up to the introduction of Abraham at the end of chapter 11) misses and degrades the purpose. If the set-up at the beginning is not literal historical fact, then the rest of the story loses its import.
The point is the spiritual implications of sin and salvation.
The genealogies are there to serve prophecies about Christ, and to confirm Jesus is the Christ. Anything more is putting a lot of risk on unnecessary detail.
This is true. God created everything, so He has the right to make demands of what we do and how we do them. But He also gave us the option of turning against Him, and we have done so, do so, and will continue to do so. Despite this, He offers a way of reconciliation, on His terms, but on such good terms that we won't find any better anywhere else.
Our sin separates all of us from God, the source of life, joy, and everything that is good. If we continue to reject Him, we will ultimately be eternally separated from Him, though He created us to possess some enduring qualities, like existence, sentience, knowledge, and memory. This eternal separation is called Hell. Because of God's absolutely perfect moral standard, we cannot even begin to pay down the debt of offense against Him. But He has recognized this, and put our sin on His Son, Jesus, and then separated Himself from Him so that our sin no longer need be the deciding factor of our separation. He only asks that we each believe that He has covered our own sin.
-- Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, John 3:16-21, 1 John 2:2
The proper response once we believe involves living in such a way that He would be pleased.
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@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
The main point of this passage is not to define a day as being equivalent to a millennium with a Greek text so that the Hebrew text can mean something in order to fit a certain worldview.
The main point is to show that God is outside our perspective of time, and that though it may seem to some people like He is lazy in fulfilling His promises, He is really just patiently waiting so that as many as want to will repent.Oh, so now you're willing to take passages metaphorically?
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@sloosecannon said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
The main point of this passage is not to define a day as being equivalent to a millennium with a Greek text so that the Hebrew text can mean something in order to fit a certain worldview.
The main point is to show that God is outside our perspective of time, and that though it may seem to some people like He is lazy in fulfilling His promises, He is really just patiently waiting so that as many as want to will repent.Oh, so now you're willing to take passages metaphorically?
When it says "as" to describe the relation, and then reverses it to prevent someone from trying to take it exactly like @xaade suggested, then yes, I think that's pretty clearly metaphorical usage of that particular phrase. The purpose for the metaphor is also clearly given in the very next verse, which I also both quoted and paraphrased.
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@djls45 I'm assigning you homework.
@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
The primary issue I have with radiometric dating methods is that they require an assumption that all of the daughter elements are results of the parent element. I.e. the lead in a sample containing both lead and uranium is assumed to have all originally been uranium. The problem with that is that we actually don't know what the composition of the original sample was, and we don't know whether it has gained or lost any of either element in the intervening time.
Find out if scientists make this assumption or if they know about the problem. Then, if they do know about the problem, find out what they do about it. Report back what you find.
Another issue is that they don't work on small scales (anything less than a few thousand years). Samples from a currently living creature have been variously dated as a few decades old, a few thousand years old, some dozens of thousands of years old, or a couple millions of years old.
Find the journal articles where these results were published. Then find the journal articles that cite that article as a reference and see what those scientists did about the problem. Report back what you find.
@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
If the gravity well/time distortion thing I mentioned earlier is true, then the rest of the universe could be several billion years old, from our perspective here on earth. If not, then it's the same age as the earth.
Find out what kind of gravity would produce a time dilation resulting in a 6,000-year-old Earth and a 14-billion-year-old universe. Think about if Earth could survive in such an environment. Report back what you find.
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@Scarlet_Manuka said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Of course sometimes things were obviously wrong, sometimes they didn't look right but I couldn't tell for sure, and sometimes they were right but I just didn't understand something. And sometimes stuff which seemed to be in the first category was actually in the second or third category. But the good thing is that by asking politely about it, you could get either a correction of the error, or an explanation of the thing you didn't understand, and either way you were better off.
All good, but this is not the same thing as having preconceived notions and not believing whatever the teacher says.
If you notice something is obviously wrong, this means that you have previously learned something, and unless you're doing all your own experiments and research, this will have come from someone who is more knowledgeable on the subject.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
That sounds like ego talking.
Not ego, but expertise. The whole point about paying someone to teach you is that they have knowledge you want but don't have (I'm not talking about students who are forced to attend lessons, and might not be interested in anything).
@Benjamin-Hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
A doctor can advise, a teacher can claim--the patient/student is in control of their own health/learning.
Ignoring the stupidity or disregarding a doctor's orders, even if you think you are in charge of your own learning at some point this learning will almost certainly come from an expert.
@Benjamin-Hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
students face their own misconceptions
Which, quite obviously, means that they were wrong, and it's the educator's job to correct them. Once again you are confusing teaching methods with the every-opinion-is-valid pox.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
@Gurth Here's the thing--no amount of "proof" will convince anyone about anything.
Hence my post that you replied to :)
The way I see it, it’s a lot like alcoholism: you have to see you have a problem before you can start getting rid of it.
@The_Quiet_One said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Nope. There is no suitable dictionary, because the dictionary you're using wasn't written under divine providence. You've got to think like the fundies do!
See above …
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@The_Quiet_One said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Originally, I thought he had said 3 (and wrote it down that way in my initial post) but after just refreshing myself on the whole Indiana thing, I confused Indiana with his belief, and edited it to be 3.2. He indeed insisted that the ratio of the diameter to circumference was 3, despite my arguments against it. Like I said, when I showed him with a dinner plate, he told me it's "close enough" and that the tape I used was too flexible, whatever the heck that means.
As a KJV fan, maybe a Euclidean construction with pencil and paper would be more to his classical/ideal tastes (if ancient Greeks aren't too pagan). Construct a regular hexagon with 6 replicas of an equilateral triangle with unit side length. This hexagon has a perimeter of 6 and a corner-to-opposite-corner length of 2. Then draw a unit-radius circle that intersects all the corners of the hexagon. The diameter is clearly 2, but the circumference must be more than 6, since it takes a longer path around than the hexagon sides.
I know, I hope too much.
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@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
The only difference is that I don't usually try to ridicule them for their beliefs.
I don't usually ridicule opinions that are different from mine. I do ridicule completely implausible beliefs, though.
@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
As for whether it's the most plausible, I suppose that depends on whether one is a theist or atheist.
I'm a Catholic, so your argument is invalid.
@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
Atheism requires something like the Big Bang and billions of years to try to explain the origins of the universe.
The Big Bang does not explain the origin of the universe at all. It only explains how it formed, not why it exists or where it came from.
@djls45 said in Let's not debate creationism in the News thread:
but a literal understanding of the Biblical narrative posits a young age for the universe
First and foremost, taking every single word of the Bible literally is a ridiculous idea due to the many contradictions in the scripture, and the arbitrary selection process during the creation of our "standard" Bible; and also due to the fact that you're probably not reading it in ancient Hebrew and Aramaic.
Secondly, the part we're talking about here, the description of the creation inside Genesis, contains a few obvious contradictions itself.
