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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Scientific Dating Methods and Counter Claims
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
All that geology poses the appearance of age. If that appearance is not the truth, then that is a back story built into it.
As I don't imagine for one moment that anyone seriously believes that God would do that to us
I have come across a very small number of people who do believe that. It is a logically unassailable position, although they do tend to get into a few knots about the nature of God such a view requires. The people I've known don't tend to get involved in discussions like this, either concluding that methods of dating (apparently) old rocks are a waste of time or more akin to literary criticism of the works of Shakespeare.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
To be devil's advocate (or God's advocate?): the tower of Babel story suggests a God who saw purpose in sowing confusion among humans as a reward for hubris. I suppose one might take a view that the genetic code and geological evidence are just such traps for today's tower-of-Babel-building hubristic scientists.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
My issue is the integrity of the Bible. I am totally aware that this is termed an interpretive issue. No one seems to get why one cannot just accept an allegorical reading. I think though, that that would put human knowledge above revelation.
quote:
The deluge combined with the contortions of the earths volcanoes that most yecs see as the 'opening of the fountains of the great deep' can account for that.
If most yecs see 'opening of the fountains of the great deep' as referring to volcanoes, then most yecs do not care about the integrity of Scripture. There is no way you can get volcanos or magma from this passage of Scripture without putting human knowledge above revelation. Scripture here talks about water before this phrase; it talks about water after the phrase. When it says fountains it means fountains of water. It doesn't matter what worldview you have; you can't make it mean volcanos.
Young Earth Creationists care no more about the integrity of Scripture than suits them.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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TonyK
Host Emeritus
# 35
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Posted
Host Mode [ACTIVATE]
Crœsos, Jamat
Louise has already issued a general warning about the trend towards personal attacks in this thread.
Some of your subsequent posts are still tending towards this though.
Please take note...
Host Mode [DEACTIVATE]
Yours aye ... TonyK
Host, Dead Horses
Posts: 2717 | From: Gloucestershire | Registered: May 2001
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goperryrevs
Shipmtae
# 13504
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Well as someone said upthread it is the need for a literal fall. You don't need forgiveness if you are not a sinner.
That was me, and I thought as much.
So, now you've said that, can you not also see how the problem isn't that we reject the Bible, but that we reject a theological construct that interprets the Bible in that way.
I don't need the bible to tell me I'm a sinner. I don't need a literal fall to tell me that I'm a sinner. I know it already.
If you were finally persuaded that a young earth is false, and that humans were created through some evolutionary process, and the house of cards did come down, and you rejected Christianity (which is what you have said would happen). Would you suddenly stop being a sinner?
The first chapters of Genesis don't tell us how all this came about. They tell us how it is. They crystalize our understanding of our condition. I don't think the Bible tells us why things are that way. I don't have an answer to that, other than Evil somehow taints God's perfect creation (me included). But it does say that God is doing something about it, that this isn't the end of the story.
I've heard before the "no historical fall, no need for a historical Jesus" line, and I think it's rubbish. Because, I don't believe in a historical fall, but I sure has hell still need Jesus.
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"Keep your eye on the donut, not on the hole." - David Lynch
Posts: 2098 | From: Midlands | Registered: Mar 2008
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
Indeed. If Jamat is looking for Adam in all this, then a mirror is all that is required. Genesis 3 is about what I, he and thee do. Not about a putative ancestor, whose actions it's hard to imagine that I need saving from.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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The Great Gumby
Ship's Brain Surgeon
# 10989
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Posted
Wow, this thread's moved on a bit!
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Indeed. If Jamat is looking for Adam in all this, then a mirror is all that is required. Genesis 3 is about what I, he and thee do. Not about a putative ancestor, whose actions it's hard to imagine that I need saving from.
I tend to think it's a bit wider than that, covering a whole lot of lost innocence, self-awareness, and above all, consciousness that our very existence is dependent on the consumption of finite resources. That includes responsibility for the death of other living creatures whose only crimes are being tasty, living where we'd like to grow vegetables, having the misfortune to carry nasty diseases, or whatever. You could say, borrowing from both Genesis and bad thrillers, that we know too much.
I don't think Jamat's view on this is that unusual. It strikes me as strange, anachronistic and (quite honestly) a denial of the very plain fact that people are quite obviously not perfect. But he's not alone - andreas1984/Andrew/El Greco had exactly the same view, and when he concluded that there hadn't been a "real" Fall, he threw out the whole of the rest of his faith as well.
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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard Feynman
A letter to my son about death
Posts: 5382 | From: Home for shot clergy spouses | Registered: Feb 2006
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goperryrevs
Shipmtae
# 13504
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
I don't think Jamat's view on this is that unusual.
Nor do I, but I think that a lot of people are just simply ignorant, as they're not geologists, scientists, so don't end up asking the difficult questions. They assume there is an answer if they ever did, so they get on with the (much more important anyhow) every day living out of their Christian lives.
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"Keep your eye on the donut, not on the hole." - David Lynch
Posts: 2098 | From: Midlands | Registered: Mar 2008
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
I don't think Jamat's view on this is that unusual. It strikes me as strange, anachronistic and (quite honestly) a denial of the very plain fact that people are quite obviously not perfect. But he's not alone - andreas1984/Andrew/El Greco had exactly the same view, and when he concluded that there hadn't been a "real" Fall, he threw out the whole of the rest of his faith as well.
I read a testimony (and I'll see if I can find it again) of a graduate from one of the conservative Christian colleges in the US, who went to work in the oil industry as a trainee geologist.
When confronted with actual rocks and actual strata and the actual processes involved in locating and extracting oil, he had no choice but to conclude that he'd been lied to throughout his college education. I can't remember if his faith survived or not. But whichever, this is the damage that bad theology does to good people.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by goperryrevs:
quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
I don't think Jamat's view on this is that unusual.
Nor do I, but I think that a lot of people are just simply ignorant, as they're not geologists, scientists, so don't end up asking the difficult questions. They assume there is an answer if they ever did, so they get on with the (much more important anyhow) every day living out of their Christian lives.
It is not this simple. I am not a geologist, one does not need to be, one only needs to pay attention in school and apply critical thinking.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
I read a testimony (and I'll see if I can find it again) of a graduate from one of the conservative Christian colleges in the US, who went to work in the oil industry as a trainee geologist.
I've misremembered some of the details, but this is what I was looking for.
Here
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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goperryrevs
Shipmtae
# 13504
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
It is not this simple. I am not a geologist, one does not need to be, one only needs to pay attention in school and apply critical thinking.
But that's what I mean. I think people don't bother to apply critical thinking. Because, in reality, it makes little difference to their lives whether the earth is 6000 years old or however many billion it really is. I know plenty of YECcies, who, had they been in Jamat's situation on this thread, would simply have re-assessed how confident they really are in a literal 6-day creation, and not kicked out the rest of Christianity with it. Most everyday people I know who still believe in a 6-day creation say "Well, what's important is that God created the world. I just think he did it in six days like the Bible says".
Jamat is different because he has built a theological framework on that foundation. But for many, although they are still YECcies, they don't have that much invested in it, and it wouldn't shatter their faith to realise that it's a load of bunkum.
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"Keep your eye on the donut, not on the hole." - David Lynch
Posts: 2098 | From: Midlands | Registered: Mar 2008
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by goperryrevs:
I think people don't bother to apply critical thinking.
And that is the scary part, because it extends into their entire lives.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
I read a testimony (and I'll see if I can find it again) of a graduate from one of the conservative Christian colleges in the US, who went to work in the oil industry as a trainee geologist.
I've misremembered some of the details, but this is what I was looking for.
Here
Here's a similar tale relayed by Fred Clark of Slacktivist. An excerpt:
quote:
There we were, in Jericho. As in Joshua fit the battle of. At 260 meters below sea level, it is the lowest city on earth. It is probably also the oldest. Humans have been living in Jericho more or less continuously for more than 10,000 years. In touring the excavations at Jericho, we saw one unearthed stone structure that the archaeology student guiding us around the dig said was probably about 8,000 years old.
This was mind-boggling for all of us. We were all Americans — people who think of places like Independence Hall or the chapels of Santa Fe as "ancient" because they have stood for centuries. We had a tough enough time with the Roman sites we had visited earlier, yet there we were, staring at this Neolithic wall that had already stood for millennia when Caesar was born.
So, you know, impressive.
But for one fellow student it was horrifying. He had been raised in a fundamentalist church to believe in a six-day creation and a young earth. How young? They embraced the skewed arithmetic of the infamous Bishop Usher, the Irish churchman who, in the 17th century, added up all the genealogies of the Old Testament and concluded that God created the earth in 4004 B.C.E. So there my friend stood, in 1990, in Jericho, believing that the universe was 5,994 years old and staring at a man-made wall that was 8,000 years old.
Something had to give.
The whole thing is worth a read, and it's not that long.
For those who are interested, here are the other posts in the series.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
Which brought me to http://www.thenation.com/article/168385/whats-matter-creationism#
I particularly like this, which sums it up really:
quote:
One reason is that rejecting evolution expresses more than an inability to think critically; it relies on a fundamentally paranoid worldview. Think what the world would have to be like for evolution to be false. Almost every scientist on earth would have to be engaged in a fraud so complex and extensive it involved every field from archaeology, paleontology, geology and genetics to biology, chemistry and physics. And yet this massive concatenation of lies and delusion is so full of obvious holes that a pastor with a Bible-college degree or a homeschooling parent with no degree at all can see right through it.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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The Great Gumby
Ship's Brain Surgeon
# 10989
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Posted
Indeed, but I suppose it's easy enough if you think "they" are evil tools of Satan, rebelling against God's creation, blinded by their own wickedness, or whatever. Extra points for Biblical references to God hardening Pharaoh's heart, handing people over to Satan, blinding them to the truth, and so on.
But I'm not sure how you explain the rest of the Bible if everything has to be a literally true account of a loving, holy, omnipotent, omniscient God...
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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard Feynman
A letter to my son about death
Posts: 5382 | From: Home for shot clergy spouses | Registered: Feb 2006
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
it was something I read about time that I didn't really understand
Several times you have reiterated the idea that various scientific notions lie outside your expertise, and this has been backed up by assorted errors you've posted in your responses.
For me, this raises a serious question, which I hope you'll deign to answer: Why on earth are you using half-understood and misunderstood and not-at-all-understood materials to argue with people who have advanced degrees in the sciences and who work in the sciences and/or related professions about the invalidity of the scientific "world-view" (to use your phrase) vis-a-vis (your singular interpretation of) the scriptural one?
What is your purpose in engaging in this thread? What is it you hope to accomplish?
I only ask because, if I were someone with no knowledge of (say) cookery, and I decided that cooking was generally being conducted along mistaken lines, I personally would attempt to learn a lot about cookery and how it's currently done before venturing among a pack of experienced chefs to tell them they're going at it all wrong and their efforts are failures.
Do you imagine you are persuading heathens into some version of the Christian fold? If not, what are you up to?
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
Posts: 3925 | From: Upper right corner | Registered: Jan 2010
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Rex Monday
None but a blockhead
# 2569
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Posted
One of the many things I've got out of being perennially interested in creationism and creationists is an awful lot of reading around the evidence. (Also, an awful lot of background on the Bible, which is fascinating in its own right.)
There is just SO MUCH evidence for an old Earth.
As well as all the examples given in this thread, there are current processes that we can observe happening now, and that have a continuous record going back many thousands of years beyond any YEC date of creation.
We have a continuous record of tree rings from overlapping samples of wood that go back 11,000 years (and, with minimal extra work, a lot further) - which also help calibrate carbon dating, and give good climate information too, so we can say with great confidence that there was no global flood in that period.
We have lake deposits with seasonal variations, called varves, that mark the changing seasonal rainfall over a year. We can observe these form today - and some, most notably the Green River Formation, go back many millions of years.
These are continuous processes with direct and hugely compelling evidence of deep history behind them, and that need no particular knowledge of physics or complex extrapolation to interpret. There are no alternative explanations that hold up to any examination - although plenty have been proposed, they are extremely weak and have no evidence to back them up. And these are just two of many thousands of primary science observations that paint a coherent, logical and testable picture of an old Earth with no universal catastrophes within human experience.
Combining that with what we know about the Bible, in particular the two (conflicting) creation accounts in Genesis - that they are part of a tradition evinced in other ancient documents, and give a coherent account of how monotheism came to pass in a polytheistic, pagan culture - and we come to a compelling and productive world view where there is just no conflict between what we observe and what we read.
It is of course possible to hold other views which explain everything, but they are neither testable nor falsifiable. Last Thursdayism, for example, holds that everything we experience was created last Thursday, with all our memories and the universe we find ourselves in created with the apparent sense of deep time.
Given that most Christians can encompass all of the above without finding their faith untenable, it seems clear to me that whatever YEC is, it's not a reliable guide to theology or science. As part of the huge spectrum of human beliefs, it clearly has value and use to some, but I've never seen any attempt to anchor it in Biblical theology or naturalistic science that wasn't damaging to it in some way.
As a mystical belief that reflects in some way a mystery beyond the reach of human reason - hardly a crime when contemplating our limits and what may lie beyond - it is something I could not argue against, even if my own contemplative tendencies lie elsewhere.
Bringing it out of that context and trying to make it fit elsewhere will, I fear, be a doomed and possibly dangerous endeavour.
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I am largely against organised religion, which is why I am so fond of the C of E.
Posts: 514 | From: Gin Lane | Registered: Mar 2002
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
And why can't we believe in the Fall, and also in evolution? I really don't see the contradiction.
Events in history can have eternal consequences. That's entirely Biblical. The Incarnation is God's response to the Fall yet God is described as preparing salvation before the founding of the world. Indoividuals need to repent and be saved, yet God is said to have written their names inthe Book of Life beofre creation. Its in Ephesians and Phillipians. Many (not all) inerrantists think of the Bible as talking about Satan a fallen angel, one of those created to be in the presence of God, and yet also the serpent in the Garden. That fall (if it happened) logically precedes the fall of humanity. Its a heavenly event, possibly outside time, certainly outside the bounds of the earthly creation.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
I only ask because, if I were someone with no knowledge of (say) cookery, and I decided that cooking was generally being conducted along mistaken lines, I personally would attempt to learn a lot about cookery and how it's currently done before venturing among a pack of experienced chefs to tell them they're going at it all wrong and their efforts are failures.
Or one could take the view that all cookery is essentially misguided because the end products are clearly unpalatable and unhealthy. Raw fruit and veg is all that should be eaten because that it how God intended it.
But in which case there is little point in engaging in detailed arguments with the soufflé chef over his whisking technique while combining an ignorance of the art with a preference for raw food.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Hawk
Semi-social raptor
# 14289
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
I only ask because, if I were someone with no knowledge of (say) cookery, and I decided that cooking was generally being conducted along mistaken lines, I personally would attempt to learn a lot about cookery and how it's currently done before venturing among a pack of experienced chefs to tell them they're going at it all wrong and their efforts are failures.
Or one could take the view that all cookery is essentially misguided because the end products are clearly unpalatable and unhealthy. Raw fruit and veg is all that should be eaten because that it how God intended it.
But in which case there is little point in engaging in detailed arguments with the soufflé chef over his whisking technique while combining an ignorance of the art with a preference for raw food.
But if you can convince the souffle chef that his whisking technique is rubbish, and all whisking techniques are rubbish, then that is a small but vital step on the way to convncing him that all cooking techniques are rubbish, and maybe one day, with God's help, he will see the light and stop torturing God's creation with his godless heathen cuisine!
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“We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know." Dietrich Bonhoeffer
See my blog for 'interesting' thoughts
Posts: 1739 | From: Oxford, UK | Registered: Nov 2008
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
While I'm in pythonesque reverie, although that might be the vision for converting the chef, what in fact happens is this: after it becomes apparent that the chef does know a bit about whisking and isn't going to be easily put off, you abruptly switch tack to argue that the eggs are off. When it is seems that you are struggling to define concepts of decay in eggs, you then argue that flour is a bad idea.
Before finally admitting that you have an a priori view that cooking is evil.
In fairness it seems to me the mirror image of Dawkins' take on religion. On the one hand he gets it badly wrong when he argues about what various religions actually say or believe, but on the other argues that he doesn't need to know anything about the details of religion to know they are all untrue.
I think one needs a consistent line. Either the bible is literally true and there's no point worrying about the science, or the bible may or may not be literally true and one might look at science to help you decide.
Conversely, either religion is simply nonsense and not worth engaging with, in which case you don't know the details, or religion may or may not be nonsense and one might need to look at the details to understand the context.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
It's also worth noting, as we continue to beat the cookery metaphor into a near-death experience, that cookery involves both physical materials and past experience of how those materials behave in various conditions.
If I crack a fresh raw hen's egg open, I can predict with reasonable certainty what will emerge from the shell: a semi-liquid, semi-gelatinous white and yolk. I predict this NOT because someone at some point in the past theorized that this is what fresh raw eggs contain, and then began cracking gazillions of eggs open to check if she was right.
I predict this because every time, or at least almost every time, in the past, when people have cracked open fresh raw hen's eggs, that's what has emerged. Each time we crack a new hen's egg open and get an oozy white-and-yolk, we confirm the predictability and reliability of past experience as a guide to future experience.
Have there ever been exceptions? I can't say for certain that, in terms of hen's eggs, there have been. MIGHT there have been or might there be exceptions? Sure. But we base science on a kind of majoritarian view: what has happened most often in the past is also what's "normal;" that is, it's what we can expect (or predict) to happen next, or in the future.
So when something happens which BREAKS the already-established experiential pattern, we immediately arrive at a question: why did something DIFFERENT happen this time?
Was it a hen's egg? Was it fresh? Was it raw? Was it new? Had it been tampered with? Were the conditions under which we cracked it different?
IF and/or WHEN exceptions to an established, previously-observed pattern occur, the first step is NOT to form a new theory. It's to ask questions.
Questions aren't a world-view; they're simply questions. Only after we attempt to answer them and in the course of those attempts, uncover information we hadn't previously considered, or taken into account, or known about, can science develop a new or different or slightly-tweaked prediction (or hypothesis).
[ 04. October 2012, 11:12: Message edited by: Porridge ]
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
Posts: 3925 | From: Upper right corner | Registered: Jan 2010
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
To be devil's advocate (or God's advocate?): the tower of Babel story suggests a God who saw purpose in sowing confusion among humans as a reward for hubris. I suppose one might take a view that the genetic code and geological evidence are just such traps for today's tower-of-Babel-building hubristic scientists.
If so, wouuldn't it be unobservant for a believer in God not to accept these traps as literal truth?
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Why is the number of fossils an issue? Given an antediluvian world of even climate, teaming with flora and fauna of all kinds which were then uprooted and buried suddenly in sediment by a cataclysmic barrage of water. The sediments probably were moved and redeposited over the year of the flood and the years of its aftermath. The issue is just how suddenly or otherwise it all happened.
[...]
No yec sees any problem with the depth of deposits. The deluge combined with the contortions of the earths volcanoes that most yecs see as the 'opening of the fountains of the great deep' can account for that.
Two observations:
One: if you are relying on one global cataclysmic flood to explain all fossils and similar, you are commiting yourself to the view that all those plants and animals were exact contemporaries, buried together during the same event. That must, surely, place a theoretical upper limit on the numbers for that to be plausible? Antediluvian Earth may have been abundant, but it wasn't infinite. If there are traces of more creatures than the Earth could possibly sustain, even in best conditions, your theory would be falsified. Wouldn't it?
Two: aren't you trying to have it both ways with the idea of the flood moving huge chunks of landscape about so as to generate thick local deposits of chalks and limestones from marine creatures which in life were widely distributed? Because you have to have that exact same flood which does that also operate as a careful and meticulous sorting mechanism for all other remains, not as the huge global mixing bowl you need to explain this.
quote:
I do not think God built a back story of age into something that wasn't old.
I can't square that with your earlier assertion that no evidence would convince you.
If you are ruling out ‘back-story' then in principle your theory can be disproved. If there are more fossils than could have lived at one time, and you are commited BOTH to the view that all fossils did live (none are pre-built as scenery), AND to the view that they were all laid down by one Biblical deluge, then you would have found evidence that firmly establishes that your views must be wrong. Are you saying effectively that you would ignore the evidence rather than re-evaluate your opinions, in that case?
quote:
What I think is that, as I keep saying, our take on facts is determined by our own back story, our preconceptions, what is acceptable to us, our world view.
I'll grant you "influenced", rather than "determined" there. That would be obviously true. But that doesn't mean, as you seem to want it to mean, that it's all about the preconceptions, and the evidence is irrelevant because it can be made to fit any world-view. Some world-views are going to be a better fit to the evidence than others because there really is a true answer to the question "what happened?" and the evidence really is a record of that answer. A world-view closer to the truth will (usually) sit more comfortably with the facts than one at odds with it.
Your creationism doesn't sit comfortably with the facts. All the world's geology, with all its records of life, does not look as if it is best explained by a single world-wide flood, responsible for both catastrophic landscape restructuring, and gentle accumulation of sediment at the same time. That's not the explanation that would leap out at any relatively impartial observer. An old earth is a better fit, regardless of one's preconceptions.
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
To be devil's advocate (or God's advocate?): the tower of Babel story suggests a God who saw purpose in sowing confusion among humans as a reward for hubris. I suppose one might take a view that the genetic code and geological evidence are just such traps for today's tower-of-Babel-building hubristic scientists.
That would be the end of all discussion, though. "God's trying to confuse us" as a hypothesis would, if proved, establish that it is impossible to know anything. God is omnipotent. If he wants us confused and misguided, we will be. There's no point trying to second guess or see through his schemes, because he will have anticipated every such attempt. No explanation could ever have better claim to be believed than another, if all of them are subject to Almighty fraud.
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
To be devil's advocate (or God's advocate?): the tower of Babel story suggests a God who saw purpose in sowing confusion among humans as a reward for hubris. I suppose one might take a view that the genetic code and geological evidence are just such traps for today's tower-of-Babel-building hubristic scientists.
That would be the end of all discussion, though. "God's trying to confuse us" as a hypothesis would, if proved, establish that it is impossible to know anything. God is omnipotent. If he wants us confused and misguided, we will be. There's no point trying to second guess or see through his schemes, because he will have anticipated every such attempt. No explanation could ever have better claim to be believed than another, if all of them are subject to Almighty fraud.
But if God is Love, then He can't be simultaneously playing this immense practical joke on us, the price of which, for those of us taken in, confused, and misguided, is eternal damnation, can He? (Which is, I hope, why Jamat does not like the back story idea.)
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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mrs whibley
Shipmate
# 4798
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Posted
Originally posted by Penny S:
quote:
But if God is Love, then He can't be simultaneously playing this immense practical joke on us, the price of which, for those of us taken in, confused, and misguided, is eternal damnation, can He? (Which is, I hope, why Jamat does not like the back story idea.)
I know we have established that there are people who believe that if YEC falls, then the whole of Christianity falls for them, but is there anyone who actually holds that a belief in YEC is necessary for salvation for anyone? If not, then it's a fairly risky practical joke anyway, as so many of us fail to fall for it properly!
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I long for a faith that is gloriously treacherous - Mike Yaconelli
Posts: 942 | From: North Lincolnshire | Registered: Aug 2003
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
Honestly? An old Earth is one of the most loving things our creator God could have done for us. It's an Earth that isn't subject to massive asteroidal bombardment, it has a solid, recyclable crust, a degree of uniformitarianism which allows us to predict not only the location of useful minerals but also zones where earthquakes and volcanoes might occur, and a magnetic field generated by our radioactive molten core to help us navigate. And we don't have to try and co-exist with massive, aggressive, enormous meat-eating dinosaurs.
An old Earth is knowable. A fake-old Earth is not.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
To be devil's advocate (or God's advocate?): the tower of Babel story suggests a God who saw purpose in sowing confusion among humans as a reward for hubris. I suppose one might take a view that the genetic code and geological evidence are just such traps for today's tower-of-Babel-building hubristic scientists.
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
That would be the end of all discussion, though. "God's trying to confuse us" as a hypothesis would, if proved, establish that it is impossible to know anything.
Well I guess like the tower of Babel the desire to confound and confuse humanity only grips the Almighty when we try and make ourselves God. So in trying to build a tower to reach heaven we get that response... and likewise trying to determine the origins of the universe by our own might we do. But if we try to build cars or make vaccines then that's broadly speaking OK by the Almighty, and we don't get scrambled in the effort. And if we try to read and understand the bible our brains are left unmessed-with since that is an approved route.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
the tower of Babel story suggests a God who saw purpose in sowing confusion among humans as a reward for hubris. I suppose one might take a view that the genetic code and geological evidence are just such traps for today's tower-of-Babel-building hubristic scientists.
There is such a thing as translation. I assume that the unspoken point of the Babel story is that God did nothing to physically prevent humanity building the tower. Humanity could perfectly well have continued building the tower anyway if only they had been willing to learn each other's languages.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Humanity could perfectly well have continued building the tower anyway if only they had been willing to learn each other's languages.
Given the nature of this thread, and its current holding-its-breath-while-awaiting-response mode, there's a certain piquant irony to your observation.
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
Posts: 3925 | From: Upper right corner | Registered: Jan 2010
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Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
That would be the end of all discussion, though. "God's trying to confuse us" as a hypothesis would, if proved, establish that it is impossible to know anything. God is omnipotent. If he wants us confused and misguided, we will be. There's no point trying to second guess or see through his schemes, because he will have anticipated every such attempt. No explanation could ever have better claim to be believed than another, if all of them are subject to Almighty fraud.
Well, yeah. We're not supposed to ask questions. We're supposed to accept what we've been told. All the answers are in the Bible. Seeking knowledge outside the Bible is sinful human pride and God will punish us. If we don't understand something, it's because God doesn't want us to know.
Well, that's what it looks like from the outside anyway.
Posts: 5430 | From: Caprica City | Registered: Jul 2005
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I assume that the unspoken point of the Babel story is that God did nothing to physically prevent humanity building the tower. Humanity could perfectly well have continued building the tower anyway if only they had been willing to learn each other's languages.
This interpretation hadn't occurred to me before. I'm going to drop my ridiculous devil's advocacy and think about a much more worthwhile Kerygmanic thread, after I've had time to think about it.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
That idea about the Babel builders reminded me that I heard a piece yesterday (about the translation of the Bible into Jamaican patois, actually) in which it was explained that that patois developed as a result of plantation owners deliberately having workers from different language groups to avoid them collaborating in overthrowing their masters. The workers would communicate anyway, in their mixed speech.
I bet those workers would have done the same, given the chance. Had the story been true.
[ 07. October 2012, 20:38: Message edited by: Penny S ]
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
/tangent
There is a similar story as to the origin of Cajón drum.
Suppression be damned. ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
/tangent
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Your creationism doesn't sit comfortably with the facts. All the world's geology, with all its records of life, does not look as if it is best explained by a single world-wide flood, responsible for both catastrophic landscape restructuring, and gentle accumulation of sediment at the same time. That's not the explanation that would leap out at any relatively impartial observer. An old earth is a better fit, regardless of one's preconceptions.
Well, as a general comment I think that the flood was way more than just a flood. And of course it is not the only cataclysmic event the Bible refers to. There is the enigmatic one liner after the birth of Peleg "The earth was divided in his days." While no other details are there to help, it seems obvious that such an event within a single lifetime would have been dramatic and far reaching.
Now I know I am no scientist or Geologist or Biologist or Physicist. I do not willingly lock horns with such either. However, to do creationists some justice their comments on what water can do are quite plausible. Water can uproot, sort and lay down.And it can do so quickly. Combine the flood with the orogeny that occurred in subsequent generations and I do not find the Bible's snapshot of history incredible.
Incidentally, Jewish geneologies are commonly full of gaps. The generational lines preserved may be incomplete and therefore chonologies determined from them, particularly after the flood, are not reliable. If for instance, you did have Abraham coexisting with Shem that would be surprising. It is more likely IMV that the generational lines contain only what is needed to determine ancestry. To a Hebrew, your grandsons were also your sons as were your great grandsons.
The article by Glenn Morton is interesting. I wonder of he is a lone voice in his recantation of creationism. The problem for yecs is that there may not be enough time for what we see, but the problem for evolutionists is that no amount of time is really enough for what is claimed. The opening chapter of Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" seems to lay out the problem. never mind ID, his opening gambit is another issue, it is that the Darwinian model fails to account for biological complexity.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Well, as a general comment I think that the flood was way more than just a flood.
Wait, if the Flood wasn't really a flood how does that not count as God lying? Isn't that more or less your whole premise? That if God (through the Bible) said there was a flood then it had to be a flood and not something else?
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
And of course it is not the only cataclysmic event the Bible refers to. There is the enigmatic one liner after the birth of Peleg "The earth was divided in his days." While no other details are there to help, it seems obvious that such an event within a single lifetime would have been dramatic and far reaching.
Indeed. Such a division of the earth also happened in the time of Churchill. And Winston said unto the Westminsterites of the land of Fulton, where there was great Missouri:
quote:
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.
Although the Cold War was indeed "dramatic and far reaching" it didn't have a tremendous impact on the world's underlying geology.
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Now I know I am no scientist or Geologist or Biologist or Physicist. I do not willingly lock horns with such either. However, to do creationists some justice their comments on what water can do are quite plausible. Water can uproot, sort and lay down. And it can do so quickly.
Given your self-admitted total ignorance of any relevant field, what criteria are you using to judge plausibility? As near as I can tell the only system you use to judge the plausibility of a proposition is "does this give me the pre-determined answer I want?" Which historical floods would you characterize as neatly sorting its debris by class, family, and species?
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Incidentally, Jewish geneologies are commonly full of gaps. The generational lines preserved may be incomplete and therefore chonologies determined from them, particularly after the flood, are not reliable.
This goes back to my earlier question of why you'll accept the premise of these particular inaccuracies in the Biblical account but not others? Also, just to clear this up in advance, do you actually have any expertise in Jewish geneology or is this another case where any contrary evidence presented will be incuriously shrugged off with lame protestations of "I'm not an expert"?
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
If for instance, you did have Abraham coexisting with Shem that would be surprising. It is more likely IMV that the generational lines contain only what is needed to determine ancestry. To a Hebrew, your grandsons were also your sons as were your great grandsons.
Which simply pretends away a problem and hopes no one else notices. For instance, if Genesis says "When Eber had lived 34 years, he became the father of Peleg, it doesn't really matter whether there are missing generations or not. Thirty-four years is thirty-four year whether Peleg was really Eber's son, grandson, great-grandson, or whatever.
As for the problem of Abraham coexisting with Shem, I'd say it's more due to Shem's supposed six century lifespan than with missing generations. Interestingly at the time Abraham was born all of his male-line ancestors going back to Noah (ten generations) were still alive, if the lifespans attributed to them by Genesis are to be believed.
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
The article by Glenn Morton is interesting. I wonder of he is a lone voice in his recantation of creationism. The problem for yecs is that there may not be enough time for what we see, but the problem for evolutionists is that no amount of time is really enough for what is claimed. The opening chapter of Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" seems to lay out the problem. never mind ID, his opening gambit is another issue, it is that the Darwinian model fails to account for biological complexity.
A witness stand is a lonely place to lie, as Behe illustrated here by admitting under oath that "the Darwinian model" (as you call it) can actually do what he says in his book it can't do. Go on and read it. It's simple enough for a judge (who is, like you, "no scientist or Geologist or Biologist or Physicist") to grasp the basics.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Louise
Shipmate
# 30
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Posted
Hosting
This thread seems to have strayed far away from examining dating methods.
If people wish to have a grab-bag of YEC arguments (pro&anti), then the correct thread is the 'Death of Darwinism'. It is also the thread for discussing Behe where he has been previously discussed at length. Please move any discussion of him to there.
thanks!
Louise
Dead Horses host
hosting off
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Now you need never click a Daily Mail link again! Kittenblock replaces Mail links with calming pics of tea and kittens! http://www.teaandkittens.co.uk/ Click under 'other stuff' to find it.
Posts: 6918 | From: Scotland | Registered: May 2001
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
A witness stand is a lonely place to lie, as Behe illustrated here by admitting under oath that "the Darwinian model" (as you call it) can actually do what he says in his book it can't do. Go on and read it. It's simple enough for a judge (who is, like you, "no scientist or Geologist or Biologist or Physicist") to grasp the basics.
Interesting that the whole discussion centres around microevolution that no creationist disputes anyway. 'Can actually do' in gene mutation is a slight stretch to 'did actually do'in a macro sense in history.
Louise, That is all I will post here.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
I've never understood how the modern young earth proponents can explain away the artic and antartic ice cores
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Now I know I am no scientist or Geologist or Biologist or Physicist. I do not willingly lock horns with such either.
But your position, and this thread, is entirely about disputing the claims of these disciplines.
There are, of course, unanswered questions in biology, geology and physics, but on one point there is overwhelming consensus. The earth is old. Every single relevant branch of science says so, and has compelling evidence to support that view. The fossil record points to an old earth. So does geology. The various radioactive clocks concur with that, and so do the genetic clocks of biology - and the geographic distribution of species offers powerful corroboration. Astronomy says the same thing. There is no scientific support to be found in any discipline for the view that the world is less than 10,000 years old.
Now you could say that theology trumps science, and despite appearances you believe that the Bible teaches infallibly that the earth is young. It might look old, but in fact it is not. You could say that God must, for reasons best known to himself, have created it with an appearance of age, a back-story. You have, though, declined to take that line.
Your argument is that the earth doesn't actually look old at all, that the evidence actually shows a young earth. That brings you into direct and inescapable conflict with every scientific discipline that has anything at all to say on the matter. If you want to present any sort of case against it, you need some evidence to say why just about every scientist on the planet has got the age of the earth so badly wrong.
And by "so badly wrong" I mean an error so vast that it is almost impossible to comprehend the scale of it. Out by a factor of somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000. An error on the scale of estimating the population of Great Britain at less than 100. Or guessing the weight of a fully laden 747 as a little under that of a bag of sugar. Or thinking that the Norman Conquest took place yesterday afternoon. That's the magnitude of the error you need to explain away. You need something better than "I'm not a scientist but..."
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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Barnabas62
Host
# 9110
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Posted
The argument that the earth only appears old is one I heard again last year - from someone of "apparently" high intelligence. So I dug out what I always thought was the definitive argument with YEC-ers.
"It says in scripture that God spoke (creation) and it was so. God cannot speak falsehood when speaking creation - or anything else. You cannot say 'this book is right, this rock is wrong'. God speaks both. The argument that the universe as it is is capable of deceiving an honest observer seems to say very nasty things about God."
"But suppose the devil did it, following the Fall?" he asked.
"You can argue that he is a deceiver; there's a lot of scriptural backing for that" I replied. "You can even argue that he is capable of causing a kind of blindness in human beings - so that they see what he wants them to see. But what he cannot do is create; he only has the power to destroy. God is the creator of all that is, seen and unseen. That's what Christians believe. To believe otherwise is an aspect of an ancient heresy. A belief that matter is itself evil is an aspect of Manichaeism". (Pointing to unconscious heresies always makes YEC fundamentalists most uncomfortable).
"So what I'm left with is that my capacity for self-deception is so great that I cannot always trust the evidence of my own eyes?" he said.
"Actually, it's rather worse than that. It's not just your eyes. It's the eyes of loads of observers. And it's scripture too. The heavens declare the glory of God. His eternal power and glory have from the beginning been clearly seen in 'the things that are made'. That is. creation itself. Scripture does not declare that the created order is deceptive. Even after the Fall. It declares the reverse of that, in both OT and NT"
"Hmm" he said. "Total depravity is even worse than I thought it was".
At which point, I threw in the sponge!
[ 09. October 2012, 10:24: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
The problem for yecs is that there may not be enough time for what we see, but the problem for evolutionists is that no amount of time is really enough for what is claimed.
Well, that is a question about dates. And there clearly is "enough time for what is claimed". Those who say there isn't seem to be either confused or just possibly lying.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
There is no scientific support to be found in any discipline for the view that the world is less than 10,000 years old.
Add a few extra zeroes in there. There is no scientific support to be found in any discipline for the view that the world is less than 1,000,000,000 years old.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
quote:
Combine the flood with the orogeny that occurred in subsequent generations and I do not find the Bible's snapshot of history incredible.
Which orogeny would that be? Do you actually know what an orogeny is?
Three major ones still active are the Himalaya, Rockies/Andes and the Alps. Do you think that any of those could have popped up, and eroded as they have, in the last 6000 years?
There are, however, older ones. The Appalachian, the Caledonian, the mountains up the spine of Norway and Sweden (these three appear to connect up if the Atlantic is closed.)
And there are what clearly appear to be the roots of older mountain building areas eroded away across Europe. Only deep inside mountains would rocks of various origins be transformed into metamorphic rocks by heat and pressure - the conditions can be worked out in laboratories.
Not do-able in 6000 years, I would imagine. And certainly not without anyone noticing.
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pjkirk
Shipmate
# 10997
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Posted
For those interested and who haven't seen it yet (ahem, Jamat), we now have verification of carbon levels up to 52,000 years ago with known-date specimens.
http://www.nature.com/news/core-sample-sends-carbon-clock-farther-back-in-time-1.11622
quote:
Bronk Ramsey’s team aimed to fill this gap by using sediment from bed of Lake Suigetsu, west of Tokyo. Two distinct sediment layers have formed in the lake every summer and winter over tens of thousands of years. The researchers collected roughly 70-metre core samples from the lake and painstakingly counted the layers to come up with a direct record stretching back 52,000 years. Preserved leaves in the cores — “they look fresh as if they’ve fallen very recently”, Bronk Ramsey says — yielded 651 carbon dates that could be compared to the calendar dates of the sediment they were found in.
This probably won't meaningfully alter any dates that we already have, but it will help fine-tune them. It also handily invalidates the ideas that the speed of half-lives has been changing over a substantial chunk of time.
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Dear God, I would like to file a bug report -- Randall Munroe (http://xkcd.com/258/)
Posts: 1177 | From: Swinging on a hammock, chatting with Bokonon | Registered: Feb 2006
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Rex Monday
None but a blockhead
# 2569
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Posted
One of the pertinent aspects of that Nature paper (which is non-technical and well worth reading) is how it demonstrates the use of multiple independent techniques to build up a consistent picture, with cross-checks and attempts to characterise and understand what limits there may be to each.
It's one of the primary characteristics of science that it is of a whole. Carbon dating here is linked to archaeological evidence, tree rings, corals and the organic components of lake varves. If the basic premise behind it is wrong, it is very hard to explain how the data from such different systems correspond so closely.
Radiometric dating is by now a large, complex and very well-attested field - and still capable of improvement through innovative and careful science, as with the Nature paper. It could still be wrong, of course; there could be a deeper explanation that makes it all misguided. But the probability is tiny, when new science fits in so well with what's already known, nor can any realistic experiments that could break it be readily conceived.
On the other hand, YEC attempts at science are almost never linked or made to fit a consistent picture. It's like early Star Trek, where each week the crew of the Enterprise make some grand new discovery - which is never mentioned again or used in subsequent episodes. The Flood is either extraordinarily energetic and chaotic - carving the Grand Canyon in hours - or so gentle and placid that every fossil on earth has been carefully laid down in exactly the right order. One argument is used to explain away one observation, another a different one, but the fact that they can't possibly describe the same event is never dealt with - or, often, admitted.
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I am largely against organised religion, which is why I am so fond of the C of E.
Posts: 514 | From: Gin Lane | Registered: Mar 2002
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Rex Monday
None but a blockhead
# 2569
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Posted
Sorry for posting again so soon, but I just came across a rather fascinating figure, J. Laurence Kulp, who was one of the founding fathers of modern C14 radiometric dating.
He was also a member of the Plymouth Brethren, and became severely discomforted in the late 1940s by the role of creationist thinking -- and in particular, Flood geology -- in fundamentalist Christian theology. Thus, he became active in fighting the cause of science within fundamentalism and evangelicalism.
I've only read the Wikipedia entry for him, but I'm following up the citations and other references. Sounds a fascinating chap; it's just sad that, more than sixty years on, people like him are so badly needed.
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I am largely against organised religion, which is why I am so fond of the C of E.
Posts: 514 | From: Gin Lane | Registered: Mar 2002
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
The problem for yecs is that there may not be enough time for what we see, but the problem for evolutionists is that no amount of time is really enough for what is claimed.
Well, that is a question about dates. And there clearly is "enough time for what is claimed". Those who say there isn't seem to be either confused or just possibly lying.
Ken, Your posts are always wise, erudite, well considered and reasonable. I will deeply miss you along with so many other folk who post here.
Go Well.
MattC
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
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