Wading into the deep end of the pool
Mike Hammond
This is my first post on talk.origins. I've recently decided to
become more involved in the creation/evolution debate, and this seems
to be the place to converse with passionate individuals on both sides
of this fascinating issue. Here's my background:
I am a 37-year-old technology trainer in the Chicago area. My formal
training is in computer science, not in theology, cosmology, biology,
or any other field especially useful to this discussion. I have a
fondness for math and science, but nothing that reaches beyond what
would be covered in a first-year college survey class.
I am a Christian of the non-denominational Protestant variety. I
accept the principle of the inerrancy of the Holy Bible in its
original form as a matter of faith, as well as the principle that the
Bible represents the divinely inspired revelation of the one God of
the universe.
Until recently, I've been an adherent of the 'old-earth' model that
says that the biblical description of 6 days must be a metaphor for
something else that fits better with scientific claims of multi-
million-year-old fossils and multi-billion-year-old galaxies. Over
the last year or so I've been increasingly persuaded by the idea that
the plain meaning of the 6 Biblical days is just that - six literal 24-
hour days.
Naturally, the math and science nerd in me rebels against that idea.
But, if it is true, (and a plain reading of the Bible makes it clear
that its author believes it is true), then that means I need to
rethink some of my concepts about the nature of the universe as I
perceive it.
So there you go. I'm wading into the deep end of the creationism/
evolutionism swimming pool, looking to see if I can swim with the big
kids.
Mike
Free Lunch
<mct...@gmail.com> wrote in talk.origins:
>Hi!
>
>This is my first post on talk.origins. I've recently decided to
>become more involved in the creation/evolution debate, and this seems
>to be the place to converse with passionate individuals on both sides
>of this fascinating issue. Here's my background:
>
>I am a 37-year-old technology trainer in the Chicago area. My formal
>training is in computer science, not in theology, cosmology, biology,
>or any other field especially useful to this discussion. I have a
>fondness for math and science, but nothing that reaches beyond what
>would be covered in a first-year college survey class.
>
>I am a Christian of the non-denominational Protestant variety. I
>accept the principle of the inerrancy of the Holy Bible in its
>original form as a matter of faith, as well as the principle that the
>Bible represents the divinely inspired revelation of the one God of
>the universe.
>
>Until recently, I've been an adherent of the 'old-earth' model that
>says that the biblical description of 6 days must be a metaphor for
>something else that fits better with scientific claims of multi-
>million-year-old fossils and multi-billion-year-old galaxies. Over
>the last year or so I've been increasingly persuaded by the idea that
>the plain meaning of the 6 Biblical days is just that - six literal 24-
>hour days.
Why? Just because some religious folks who are ignorant of science
insist on it?
>
>Naturally, the math and science nerd in me rebels against that idea.
Go with that idea.
>But, if it is true, (and a plain reading of the Bible makes it clear
>that its author believes it is true), then that means I need to
>rethink some of my concepts about the nature of the universe as I
>perceive it.
Why? What makes the Bible reliable? Don't say "God" because there is no
evidence that God had anything at all to do with the Bible.
>So there you go. I'm wading into the deep end of the creationism/
>evolutionism swimming pool, looking to see if I can swim with the big
>kids.
Why would you accept claims about the inerrancy of the Bible when the
clear, overwhelming evidence shows that the Bible is chock full of
fantasy stories, nonsense, wishful thinking and other untrustworthy
claims -- particularly if read in the modern "literal" sense? Modern
literalists have twisted the Bible beyond recognition, beyond sense.
Bruce Salem is not surprised at your background.
Stuart
Science is about testable hypotheses and evidence. If you prefer dogma
that can't be verified
and that is not amenable to scientific scrutiny, there's nit much we
can talk about.
So called creation scientists insist that science actually supports
their literal biblical views.
Unfortunately they can't produce any scientific evidence that supports
their views.
And neither can you.
Stuart
Cubist
> Until recently, I've been an adherent of the 'old-earth' model that
> says that the biblical description of 6 days must be a metaphor for
> something else that fits better with scientific claims of multi-
> million-year-old fossils and multi-billion-year-old galaxies. Over
> the last year or so I've been increasingly persuaded by the idea that
> the plain meaning of the 6 Biblical days is just that - six literal 24-
> hour days.
is, indeed, six literal 24-hour days. The question is, should Genesis
be interpreted as a news report -- that is, as a literally true,
factual account of a series of historical events -- or should it be
interpreted in a *non*-literal manner, perhaps as a metaphor or
something else?
Personally, I think it's just stoopid to interpret Genesis as a
news report. This is because I know that the Creation story in Genesis
chapter 1 *contradicts* the Creation story in Genesis chapter 2, or at
least those two Creation stories contradict each other *if* both of
them are news reports. If you don't think there's only one creation
story, tell me, please: Which did God create first, humans or horses?
If you go by Genesis 1, horses were created in Gen1:25 (as part of
"And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after
their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his
kind"), and humans in Gen 1:26, so by a literalistic 'news report'
interpretation, horses came first. But according to Genesis 2, the
first human was created in Gen 2:7 ("And the LORD God formed man of
the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life; and man became a living soul."), and only *after* God noticed
that Adam *had no companions* (Gen 2:18: "2:18 And the LORD God said,
It is not good that the man should be alone...") were horses created
(as part of "And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of
the field" in Gen 2:19). The upshot is, *both* Genesis 1 *and* Genesis
2 *cannot* be literal, historical Truth, because by a literal,
historical reading, *those two chapters of Genesis CONTRADICT EACH
OTHER*.
This is a bit of a problem for literal interpretation of Genesis,
not so?
Perhaps God is smart enough to use metaphors, or even speak in
parables which convey Truth even tho they aren't news reports. Or
perhaps not; you'll have to make that call yourself.
David Hare-Scott
> Hi!
>
> This is my first post on talk.origins. I've recently decided to
> become more involved in the creation/evolution debate, and this seems
> to be the place to converse with passionate individuals on both sides
> of this fascinating issue. Here's my background:
>
> I am a 37-year-old technology trainer in the Chicago area. My formal
> training is in computer science, not in theology, cosmology, biology,
> or any other field especially useful to this discussion. I have a
> fondness for math and science, but nothing that reaches beyond what
> would be covered in a first-year college survey class.
>
> I am a Christian of the non-denominational Protestant variety. I
> accept the principle of the inerrancy of the Holy Bible in its
> original form as a matter of faith, as well as the principle that the
> Bible represents the divinely inspired revelation of the one God of
> the universe.
>
> Until recently, I've been an adherent of the 'old-earth' model that
> says that the biblical description of 6 days must be a metaphor for
> something else that fits better with scientific claims of multi-
> million-year-old fossils and multi-billion-year-old galaxies. Over
> the last year or so I've been increasingly persuaded by the idea that
> the plain meaning of the 6 Biblical days is just that - six literal
> 24- hour days.
>
I have never seen any reasonable argument that this interpretation is
essential to the core values and beliefs of Christianity. There are those,
some post here, who adhere to that and to more extreme views along the lines
that if you accept evolution that automatically makes you an atheist.
I cannot see that even given the premise that the Bible is inspired by God
it is at all necessary for it to be taken literally. Fallible men wrote it
and since the various parts were written it has been translated and edited
many times and the context of the words as written is not the modern
context, so how you can say that every word is literally God's intent by
reading the modern meanings of the English words is beyond reason. This is
clearly illustrated every time the literalists cannot agree on the literal
meaning.
> Naturally, the math and science nerd in me rebels against that idea.
> But, if it is true, (and a plain reading of the Bible makes it clear
> that its author believes it is true), then that means I need to
> rethink some of my concepts about the nature of the universe as I
> perceive it.
>
The literalist view forces you to choose and the choice often taken is that
the Bible is authoritative on all things including science and thus any
science that contradicts it must be false. You then spend your life running
and hiding from the logical inconsistencies in the Book and between this
view and observable reality. It must be deeply troubling to have censor so
many observations and twist and turn to avoid yawning logical traps.
> So there you go. I'm wading into the deep end of the creationism/
> evolutionism swimming pool, looking to see if I can swim with the big
> kids.
>
> Mike
Keep your head above water by continuing to think and to observe. Would He
give you a good brain and then require you not to use it?
David
Garamond Lethe
>
Hi, Mike.
You raise an interesting question of theology: how do you go about
determining if one biblical interpretation is better than another?
Isaiah 55:12 comes to mind:
"For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the
mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and
all the trees of the field shall clap [their] hands..."
The "plain reading", as you call it, doesn't work well here, and so
far as I'm able to tell every believer of biblical inerrancy reads
this passage as metaphorical. The point is so obvious that we usually
don't ask *why* it's obvious. So let me ask (and answer) that
question here: why is the plain reading of this passage inferior to
the metaphorical reading?
You could begin an end with the observation that "Trees don't have
hands". But (your inner six-year-old might ask), how do you know
trees didn't have hands at the time the passage was written? That
question is going to ultimately come down to evidence: we have no
evidence for handed trees, ancient or otherwise. Combine this with
the fact that Isaiah makes use of lots of metaphors and the
metaphorical reading works really well and I think we can declare this
particular case closed.
You're proposing a plain reading for the first few verses of Genesis.
As our resident philosopher king has been known to observe, there are
no bad positions, only bad arguments. So, what is your argument why a
plain reading should be preferred to a metaphorical (or folkloric)
reading?
You're going to have to account for two points:
a) The God of who inspired the Bible is perfectly capable of speaking
in metaphors, parables, poetry and the odd rhetorical question.
b) The God who created the universe has filled it with evidence of
its age (not only the rocks, but light itself testifies to this).
There exist theological arguments that account for these two points,
but they usually involve either a weak God or a trickster God. Other
religious traditions have no difficulty incorporating these, but if
you prefer a loving, omnipotent God, then you're going to have to
explain why He *cannot* have spoken metaphorically in Genesis, and why
he allowed the fabric of creation to contradict His account of it.
Most creationists resolve this by creating God in their image: if
they cannot image how God could use evolution to create mankind, then
God must not have been able to figure this out either and thus had to
resort to miracles. As theologies go, I think you can do better.
John S. Wilkins
My own preferred counterexample to plain literalism is this:
Song of Solomon 4:4 - "Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for
an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of
mighty men."
Now if read literally, Solomon's beloved has a neck that looks like a
stone tower with a thousand big shields. I diagnose a skin condition. Is
that the only interpretation? If not (and clearly not), then literalism
is not mandated for all of the Bible. The question now remains: which
parts of the Bible are literal and which are metaphorical, allegorical
or analogical? If someone can come up with a way to do this
principledly, more power to them.
Add to this the doctrone of one truth - truth (from science) cannot
contradicts truth (from scripture or vice versa) and you have a major
degree of freedom in interpreting passages from the Bible. As the joke
goes, now we know what we are; the rest is negotiating the fee.
--
John S. Wilkins, Associate, Philosophy, University of Sydney
http://evolvingthoughts.net
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre
Rolf
> Hi!
>
> This is my first post on talk.origins. I've recently decided to
> become more involved in the creation/evolution debate, and this seems
> to be the place to converse with passionate individuals on both sides
> of this fascinating issue. Here's my background:
Hi Mike, welcome on board!
I believe that growing up in a nominally Christian country, most people will
be faced with the problem of what to make of the Bible. Myth or historical
fact?
Books have been written and will be written on the subject but in the end we
are left with the choice between faith and reason.
I have read and studied a lot in my life and have got it all sorted out for
myself and I'll leave you to find your own solutions. The Holy Spirit of
Truth has been my lodestar through life; I've always searched for truth; to
let faith trump facts and reason has never been an option.
I am looking forward to see what questions you may ask. I may attempt to
reply too if I think I have anything of value to say.
Rolf
>Mike
Frank J
> Hi!
>
> This is my first post on talk.origins. I've recently decided to
> become more involved in the creation/evolution debate, and this seems
> to be the place to converse with passionate individuals on both sides
> of this fascinating issue. Here's my background:
>
> I am a 37-year-old technology trainer in the Chicago area. My formal
> training is in computer science, not in theology, cosmology, biology,
> or any other field especially useful to this discussion. I have a
> fondness for math and science, but nothing that reaches beyond what
> would be covered in a first-year college survey class.
>
> I am a Christian of the non-denominational Protestant variety. I
> accept the principle of the inerrancy of the Holy Bible in its
> original form as a matter of faith, as well as the principle that the
> Bible represents the divinely inspired revelation of the one God of
> the universe.
>
> Until recently, I've been an adherent of the 'old-earth' model that
> says that the biblical description of 6 days must be a metaphor for
> something else that fits better with scientific claims of multi-
> million-year-old fossils and multi-billion-year-old galaxies. Over
> the last year or so I've been increasingly persuaded by the idea that
> the plain meaning of the 6 Biblical days is just that - six literal 24-
> hour days.
So do you find that multiple lines of independent evidence converge on
an age of the universe, earth and life in the mere 1000s of years? And
are you prepared to critically analyze that evidence - all of it, not
just the parts you like - and support it on it's own merits,
independent of any "weaknesses" you find in the data of mainstream
science (and OECs)?
And would you have reached that conclusion had you never read the
Bible?
>
> Naturally, the math and science nerd in me rebels against that idea.
> But, if it is true, (and a plain reading of the Bible makes it clear
> that its author believes it is true), then that means I need to
> rethink some of my concepts about the nature of the universe as I
> perceive it.
>
> So there you go. I'm wading into the deep end of the creationism/
> evolutionism swimming pool, looking to see if I can swim with the big
> kids.
>
> Mike
While you're wading, have you posted this to the "big kids" at OEC and
ID sites too?
Frank J
> On Sun, 5 Jun 2011 18:51:20 -0700 (PDT), Mike Hammond
>
> - Show quoted text -
Oops, I missed the "evolutionism." I'm smelling Loki.
Ernest Major
<5d12a837-5e3e-4f4c...@r1g2000yqg.googlegroups.com>, Mike
Hammond <mct...@gmail.com> writes
>Hi!
>
>This is my first post on talk.origins. I've recently decided to
>become more involved in the creation/evolution debate, and this seems
>to be the place to converse with passionate individuals on both sides
>of this fascinating issue. Here's my background:
>
>I am a 37-year-old technology trainer in the Chicago area. My formal
>training is in computer science, not in theology, cosmology, biology,
>or any other field especially useful to this discussion. I have a
>fondness for math and science, but nothing that reaches beyond what
>would be covered in a first-year college survey class.
>
>I am a Christian of the non-denominational Protestant variety. I
>accept the principle of the inerrancy of the Holy Bible in its
>original form as a matter of faith, as well as the principle that the
>Bible represents the divinely inspired revelation of the one God of
>the universe.
If you "accept" the inerrancy of the Bible as a matter of faith then you
need to be careful not to stray into idolatry - worshipping the Bible,
rather than God.
Also, the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy is of little interpretative
value; as interpretation of the Bible is not inerrant the Bible might as
well not be inerrant.
And, as a Christian you would be expected to place more weight on what
you are supposed to believe are the works of God (the world) than on the
words of men (the Bible, and in particular interpretations of the
Bible).
http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-vDhYTlCNw
>
>Until recently, I've been an adherent of the 'old-earth' model that
>says that the biblical description of 6 days must be a metaphor for
>something else that fits better with scientific claims of multi-
>million-year-old fossils and multi-billion-year-old galaxies. Over
>the last year or so I've been increasingly persuaded by the idea that
>the plain meaning of the 6 Biblical days is just that - six literal 24-
>hour days.
Regardless of what the plain meaning of Genesis is, the contradictions
between the two creation stories in Genesis is a strong hint that the
authors did not intend the "plain" (literal) meaning.
>
>Naturally, the math and science nerd in me rebels against that idea.
>But, if it is true, (and a plain reading of the Bible makes it clear
>that its author believes it is true), then that means I need to
>rethink some of my concepts about the nature of the universe as I
>perceive it.
I do not believe that it is possible to reconstruct the intended meaning
of Genesis at this remove, but as mentioned above, the internal
contradictions are a strong hint that it wasn't intended to be taken
literally.
If you are to reject evidence at to the nature of the world in favour of
an interpretation of the Bible then you are stumbling into bibliolatry.
>
>So there you go. I'm wading into the deep end of the creationism/
>evolutionism swimming pool, looking to see if I can swim with the big
>kids.
>
>Mike
>
--
alias Ernest Major
Arkalen
? But Mikes are rather common on Usenet and I might be confusing him
with the guy from Jurassic Park.
J. J. Lodder
Merely rethinking won't do.
Only giving up thought altogether will work.
But if you don't mind me asking, why this regression?
Jan
Frank J
>
> - Show quoted text -
Probably because YEC sells better to the "masses." That's why the OECs
who bought into the ID scam discourage discussing the "when"
questions.
Ron O
Some words of advice.
Do not claim to have an open mind if you are committed to being a
young earth creationists (YEC). One of the common mistakes that the
anti science creationist faction makes to to lie about what they
believe and their motivations. That may sound sad, but it is common
to have people claiming to be agnostic and then have them spouting
Bible verses when they run into reality.
There is no real science worth spit that backs up YEC. Negative
arguments against some other position don't count for much if
anything. Anyone that solves real life problems knows that fact.
The Bible is not a scientific work. It is basically worthless in this
debate unless you want to argue theology and this may not be the best
venue for that. What you need is actual evidence that the world might
have been created in a week only a few thousand years ago.
Basically you have to present your model and the evidence to back it
up. If you know any science you know that you basically have nothing,
so that is where you are stuck as a starting point. We can all agree
that it is possible that some god created the world yesterday after
you supposedly wrote this post, with all our memories intact, and all
the evidence that something existed before yesterday, but that isn't
science. Good luck.
Ron Okimoto
TomS
<5d12a837-5e3e-4f4c...@r1g2000yqg.googlegroups.com>, Mike Hammond
stated..."
On the one hand, there is the question as to why anyone would think
that the Bible was meant to be taken this way. What in the Bible is
there that says that? There are several places which assert a non-
literal reading.
On the other hand, there is enough in the Bible which has been taken
to support geocentrism. While things like the literal, ordinary 24
hour day have been questioned by people like Augustine, it seems that
no one questioned the daily motion of the Sun around the Earth for
some 2000 years (500 BC to AD 1500 or so).
--
---Tom S.
"... the heavy people know some magic that can make things move and even fly,
but they're not very bright, because they can't survive without their magic
contrivances"
Xixo, in "The Gods Must Be Crazy II"
TomS
<5d12a837-5e3e-4f4c...@r1g2000yqg.googlegroups.com>, Mike Hammond
stated..."
>
On the one hand, there is the question as to why anyone would think
TomS
<5d12a837-5e3e-4f4c...@r1g2000yqg.googlegroups.com>, Mike Hammond
stated..."
>
On the one hand, there is the question as to why anyone would think
Robert Carnegie: Fnord: cc talk-origins@moderators.isc.org
Hi, Mike. I'm an atheist, I used to be a Christian.
I think that what I want to say to you is that to appreciate and enjoy
and take stewardship of the world that we live in, which I recommend
as our role in it, you should understand clearly what it is, which
isn't necessarily what an anonymous document written before science
was popular says it is.
There is a "tradition" that the first five "books" of the bible were
all written by Moses, but real scholarship finds that they were put
together from multiple documents at a time much later than whenever
Moses is supposed to have lived.
My atheist opinion is that there isn't a need to look for the six
biblical days to be other than the ordinary period of time of that
name, but that the story simply isn't true: quite a simple answer. I
imagine that for you it will be difficult to accept that God's
revelation contains fictions, fables, and untruths - it was for me -
so let me suggest to you that whether any one part of the bible is
true or not, doesn't necessarily matter, but only when it becomes
relevant. (Also, when Jesus tells stories, are they all true
stories?) We've got at least one someone here who professes that the
sun orbits around the earth, not the other way around, although I
think they may be shamming for fun; I'm going to guess that you aren't
of that party.
A proper understanding of the nature of the universe and of the origin
of the species of living things on the Earth is important now if we
hope to continue living on the Earth ourselves - or off it - because
humans are now crowding many, many of the world's millions of species
into extinction - once they're gone, they're gone, and that's bad
stewardship - and if we /don't/ kill them all off in the end, then
it's rather likely that somewhere in outer space there's an asteroid
that will: those fellows hit us from time to time, awfully hard,
exactly (well, more or less) like in those movies. These are just a
couple of the issues that we should pay attention to, and we have to
set the bible aside to do it.
Anyway, let's briefly look at the six days. One of my favourite
glitches in the story is that God creates plants on land but not in
the water. (As far microscopic microbes, I'll let him create after
"heaven and earth" and before he invented days: it doesn't say that
that happened straight away, and the bible author surely didn't know
that microbes exist.)
Another is that the sky gets light in the day and dark at night well
before the Sun is created, whereas it's fairly well accepted nowadays
that the Sun /makes/ the sky light in the daytime. Incidentally, the
Earth turns in space in about 23 hours 56 minutes (the siderial day);
because the Earth also orbits around the Sun, the time from "Sun
overhead" to "Sun overhead" is different, and of course more
important, for practical purposes.
In fact, the universe has existed, gradually developing, since an
origin about 13.7 billion years ago, the Sun has been burning for
about five billion years and is good for another five (or, I'm sure I
read somewhere, getting overall very gradually hotter, making Earth's
orbit uninhabitable - when the seas evaporate it's all over - in a
mere one billion years - but that could be just me), Earth itself
basically finished building about 4.5 billion ybp (years before
present, or specifically before 1950 - it's to do with radioactive
isotope dating), and for about five-sixths of the time since then, it
had either nothing, or nothing but the microscopic microbes, living on
it - and no air fit for us to breathe for a long while, either; life
that's large enough to make proper fossils is comparatively recent in
appearance, notably in the "Cambrian explosion", a series of
developments that took place a mere 0.6 billion years ago. Dinosaurs
showed up about 230 million years ago, and you've probably heard the
rest.
William Hughes
I am not sure you are in the right place.
The question of whether the author of Genesis
intended to "days" in the first creation story to
refer to periods of 24 hours, is a theological question
and/or a question of literary history.
The question of whether the first creation story
in Genesis, however interpreted, should be considered
a journalistic account is theological.
The question of whether the first creation story in
Genesis should be considered to be the truth
[as opposed to other creation stories, I like the Raven
myself but I have always had a liking for trickster gods]
is a fundamental question of what "truth"
is and how one determines it.
These questions are only peripherally related to
the evolution/creation (there's a false dichotomy
if I ever saw one) debate. (Not that you won't get
lots of opinions here, some even well informed.).
The question of how well the first creation story
in Genesis fits with mainstream scientific theory
(badly, or if the "days" are considered to be 24 hours,
very badly) has a simple answer as there is not
much debate on what the mainstream scientific
theory is (the debate centres on whether it is
"true").
Most of the debate around here centres on the question
of the consistency or lack thereof of mainstream
scientific thinking. (e.g. is the theory of Natural Selection
self-consistent?; is the observed fossil record
consistent with Evolution?) It is not clear that you
want to discuss these issues. Even if you do
I would suggest you first visit the talk.origins
faqs and perhaps "anwersingenesis.org" to see what
has already been said. (But if you present an
argument from "answers in genesis" without
checking the talk.origins faqs you will be
mocked)
- William Hughes
LT
>
> - Show quoted text -
Might be thinking of George Hammond of the "proof of God"? He was
batshit crazy.
LT
hersheyh
As has been pointed out by others, the two versions of Genesis have
obvious and blatant contradictory features (in addition to being
contradicted by empirical reality -- the universe is not, in fact, a
mere few thousand years old, life on this planet was not 'poofed' into
existence in a single day). So the question arises, were the people
who wrote it incapable of reasoned thought? Were they stupid? Or was
it written in such a context that the literal truth-ness or
consistency of the text does not matter? I would argue for the
latter. They weren't stupid. They were capable of reasoned thought.
Their description has a definite "message", but one that differs from
the literal interpretation, which is unsurprising for a creation myth.
The people who wrote this down were living in a world in which what we
now consider to be inanimate objects like the "sun", the "moon", and
the "earth" were all gods and the rulers of countries/tribes had
arrogated unto themselves the title of "demi-god". Often these 'gods'
interfered with humans and each demanded their own sacrifices to
prevent catastrophe (disease, famine, slavery or involuntary
servitude). The tribe of the Israelites, OTOH, had only one god and
rejected the idea of many gods and human demi-gods. So, in their
creation myth (myth is not a perjorative term; it is often a way of
telling a story, particularly in tribes and before writting, often
with relevant lessons -- consider it a parable, which is also a story
whose literal truth or falsness doesn't matter) they insist on the one
god, who 'created' the sun, the moon, the earth, and the creatures
they saw among them. The "meaning" of such a myth is that the heavens
and earth were, explicitly, not independent gods. Moreover, in their
myth, *all* humans were created from the same 'dust'. There were no
demi-gods that came down from the heavens to rule over ordinary
humans. [That much of the writing down appears to come through times
of enslavement might have something to do with this viewpoint. The
Torah likely was a written version of an older oral tradition (around
1000 BC), so it is not surprising that there is some variation in the
text. Ever play "telephone"?]
In such a context, the fact that this creation myth does not match
modern scientific knowledge is irrelevant, as is the internal
contradictions in the text. And the message that is being sent about
the distinction between what is "real" and what is "god" and the
equality of humans (albeit, there is the typical tribal inequality in
the role of women) is still a valid "message" that the metaphorically-
challenged Biblical literalist completely ignores. Of course, the
metaphorically-challenged Biblical literalist claims that the authors
were not writing down ancient creation stories, but had a pipeline
directly from God. I see no reason to accept that than I do to accept
that Harold Camping has a direct pipeline to God.
Robert Carnegie: Fnord: cc talk-origins@moderators.isc.org
This /is/ an OEC and ID "site". All opinions may be discussed here,
at your own risk, of very heavy criticism.
talk.origins exists to let people have such discussions if they want
to - here - and not if they don't - in
scientists.serious.discussions.really-serious.no-religious-loonies-
thank-you.
Where they get onto the question of "cold fusion", and so forth.
raven1
Or your position on the Bible's inerrancy.
Robert Carnegie: Fnord: cc talk-origins@moderators.isc.org
> says that the biblical description of 6 days must be a metaphor for
> something else that fits better with scientific claims of multi-
> million-year-old fossils and multi-billion-year-old galaxies. Over
> the last year or so I've been increasingly persuaded by the idea that
> the plain meaning of the 6 Biblical days is just that - six literal 24-
> hour days.
>
> Naturally, the math and science nerd in me rebels against that idea.
> But, if it is true, (and a plain reading of the Bible makes it clear
> that its author believes it is true), then that means I need to
> rethink some of my concepts about the nature of the universe as I
> perceive it.
On reflection, I want to revisit and maybe repeat some comments on
where you yourself are, in this - in a science history context.
I think it can be said fairly that Christians rarely doubted that
events described in the bible had historically happened just as they
were described, until, in particular, evidence of geology, rather than
biology, forced investigators to consider that natural processes on
the Earth have been operating for far longer than bible dates for the
age of the world allow. I don't know whether people were separately
worried about other incidents such as God stopping the motion of the
Sun one day (and the Moon), which heliocentrists would have to
understand as stopping the motion of the Earth - which is about 1000
miles an hour on the equator - without other chroniclers around the
world noticing and mentioning it.
Christians then started to consider that either various kinds of
exception applied, or that the Genesis origin was some kind of
metaphor, allegory, or fable. They did this principally because there
was very strong evidence that it wasn't journalism. There may have
been a secondary recognition that God is constructing the world in
rather the same way that Old Macdonald constructs his farm in the
song, and that isn't a literal account, either.
And now, you are wrestling with several questions, which you might be
mistaking for one question: did the bible writer mean actual days in
the context of the story? And did he believe that it was an accurate
description of the origin of the world and of living things? And is
it an accurate description?
I propose (1) yes and (2 and 3) no - it was only intended as a fable.
And I propose that you are trying to avoid that conclusion not because
you are comfortable with it being true and not a fable, but because
you fear that either God, or your pastor, or your friends at church,
will hold it against you. Or because you fear that in fact the devil
is using reasonability and your own intelligence to mislead you into
doubting God's words.
But these are not reasonable arguments in a question of fact.
TomS
<0ac5c47e-3ef6-4623...@m4g2000yqk.googlegroups.com>, hersheyh
stated..."
[...snip...]
>The people who wrote this down were living in a world in which what we
>now consider to be inanimate objects like the "sun", the "moon", and
>the "earth" were all gods and the rulers of countries/tribes had
>arrogated unto themselves the title of "demi-god". Often these 'gods'
>interfered with humans and each demanded their own sacrifices to
>prevent catastrophe (disease, famine, slavery or involuntary
>servitude). The tribe of the Israelites, OTOH, had only one god and
>rejected the idea of many gods and human demi-gods. So, in their
>creation myth (myth is not a perjorative term; it is often a way of
>telling a story, particularly in tribes and before writting, often
>with relevant lessons -- consider it a parable, which is also a story
>whose literal truth or falsness doesn't matter) they insist on the one
>god, who 'created' the sun, the moon, the earth, and the creatures
>they saw among them. The "meaning" of such a myth is that the heavens
>and earth were, explicitly, not independent gods. Moreover, in their
>myth, *all* humans were created from the same 'dust'. There were no
>demi-gods that came down from the heavens to rule over ordinary
>humans. [That much of the writing down appears to come through times
>of enslavement might have something to do with this viewpoint. The
>Torah likely was a written version of an older oral tradition (around
>1000 BC), so it is not surprising that there is some variation in the
>text. Ever play "telephone"?]
I'd point out that Genesis 1 doesn't even name the Sun and the Moon,
which may suggest that the author (and his audience) wanted to treat
them just as "lights", and says that they were placed in the firmament
to mark the passage of time, rather than being powerful beings.
Steven L.
> Hi!
>
> This is my first post on talk.origins. I've recently decided to
> become more involved in the creation/evolution debate, and this seems
> to be the place to converse with passionate individuals on both sides
> of this fascinating issue. Here's my background:
>
> I am a 37-year-old technology trainer in the Chicago area. My formal
> training is in computer science, not in theology, cosmology, biology,
> or any other field especially useful to this discussion. I have a
> fondness for math and science, but nothing that reaches beyond what
> would be covered in a first-year college survey class.
>
> I am a Christian of the non-denominational Protestant variety. I
> accept the principle of the inerrancy of the Holy Bible in its
> original form as a matter of faith, as well as the principle that the
> Bible represents the divinely inspired revelation of the one God of
> the universe.
>
> says that the biblical description of 6 days must be a metaphor for
> something else that fits better with scientific claims of multi-
> million-year-old fossils and multi-billion-year-old galaxies. Over
> the last year or so I've been increasingly persuaded by the idea that
> the plain meaning of the 6 Biblical days is just that - six literal 24-
> hour days.
>
> Naturally, the math and science nerd in me rebels against that idea.
> But, if it is true, (and a plain reading of the Bible makes it clear
> that its author believes it is true), then that means I need to
> rethink some of my concepts about the nature of the universe as I
> perceive it.
>
> evolutionism swimming pool, looking to see if I can swim with the big
> kids.
You sound very much like Kurt Wise: An intelligent man who understands
the science, but who also sees so many contradictions with Biblical
inerrancy that he has to make a definite choice between one and the other.
And like Kurt Wise, you've chosen to stick with Biblical inerrancy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Wise
There's no real way around that. Modern science and Biblical inerrancy
are incompatible. You can't reconcile modern geology, astronomy, and
astrophysics with the Universe being created in 6 24 hour days.
Unless you resort to Omphalos-like solipsism, in which God created the
Universe in 6 24-hour days by making it *look* like it's far older--a
cosmic fake, in other words.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_%28book%29
But Omphalos requires a God capable of massive deception--would you
really want to pray to such a God? And should we emulate such a God by
being liars and deceivers ourselves?
-- Steven L.
Frank J
C'mon, you know I mean the ones *run* by OECs and IDers. It has been
years since I visited the former, but the latter have a habit of
banning YECs and OECs who prefer to defend their particular "theories"
instead of attacking "Darwinism."
But here too there is a lot of the same "pseudoscience code of
silence" among advocates of contradictory anti-evolution "theories."
Ray and Nyikos provide most of the few exceptions to the rule.
>
> talk.origins exists to let people have such discussions if they want
> to - here - and not if they don't - in
> scientists.serious.discussions.really-serious.no-religious-loonies-
> thank-you.
>
> Where they get onto the question of "cold fusion", and so forth.- Hide quoted text -
Frank J
(Agent 86 mode)
Woud you believe an indirect pipeline that goes through Gene Scott? ;-)
TomS
<950f216d-17d2-4ce7...@r33g2000prh.googlegroups.com>, Robert
Carnegie: Fnord: cc talk-o...@moderators.isc.org stated..."
Take a look at this book:
James L. Kugel
The Bible As It Was
Belknap Press of Harvard U. Press, 1997
It gives a sampling of the ways that the Bible was read by Christians
and Jews for a few centuries around the turn of the "common era". They
were very imaginative.
jillery
> Hi!
Hi! back atcha.
> This is my first post on talk.origins. I've recently decided to
> become more involved in the creation/evolution debate, and this seems
> to be the place to converse with passionate individuals on both sides
> of this fascinating issue. Here's my background:
>
> I am a 37-year-old technology trainer in the Chicago area. My formal
> training is in computer science, not in theology, cosmology, biology,
> or any other field especially useful to this discussion. I have a
> fondness for math and science, but nothing that reaches beyond what
> would be covered in a first-year college survey class.
>
> I am a Christian of the non-denominational Protestant variety. I
> accept the principle of the inerrancy of the Holy Bible in its
> original form as a matter of faith, as well as the principle that the
> Bible represents the divinely inspired revelation of the one God of
> the universe.
>
> Until recently, I've been an adherent of the 'old-earth' model that
> says that the biblical description of 6 days must be a metaphor for
> something else that fits better with scientific claims of multi-
> million-year-old fossils and multi-billion-year-old galaxies. Over
> the last year or so I've been increasingly persuaded by the idea that
> the plain meaning of the 6 Biblical days is just that - six literal 24-
> hour days.
I would be very interested in hearing what it is that persuaded you on
this point.
> Naturally, the math and science nerd in me rebels against that idea.
> But, if it is true, (and a plain reading of the Bible makes it clear
> that its author believes it is true), then that means I need to
> rethink some of my concepts about the nature of the universe as I
> perceive it.
>
Steven L.
> Mike Hammond<mct...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Merely rethinking won't do.
> Only giving up thought altogether will work.
>
> But if you don't mind me asking, why this regression?
Ask Kurt Wise, who went through a similar thought process and came to
the same conclusion.
-- Steven L.
Steven L.
> Now if read literally, Solomon's beloved has a neck that looks like a
> stone tower with a thousand big shields. I diagnose a skin condition. Is
> that the only interpretation? If not (and clearly not), then literalism
> is not mandated for all of the Bible. The question now remains: which
> parts of the Bible are literal and which are metaphorical, allegorical
> or analogical? If someone can come up with a way to do this
> principledly, more power to them.
As I understand it, ever since Luther and Calvin, a literal Fall was
deemed necessary in Genesis to give meaning to Jesus' death.
This particular event in Genesis--the Fall in the Garden of Eden--is
uniquely important to Protestantism, is it not?
-- Steven L.
TomS
<-PGdnbz8N8WEk3DQ...@earthlink.com>, Steven L. stated..."
Please do not take this as a flame. No insult is intended.
I have a problem with the expression "literal Fall", even though I
recognize that it widely used, when referring to what happened to
Adam in the Garden of Eden.
Here's my problem.
A literal fall would be a sudden change of position in space from
above to below. A literal fall would be measured in meters or yards.
No one is making the claim that Adam tripped over something or
made a plunge from a cliff or any other kind of truly literal fall.
I know what you mean by "literal Fall", and I'm not arguing about
that.
BTW, when, by whom, was the word "fall" first used to describe what
happened to Adam as a result of the incident of the fruit in the
Garden of Eden? I don't think that the Bible uses the word "fall".
Dana Tweedy
> Hi!
>
> This is my first post on talk.origins. I've recently decided to
> become more involved in the creation/evolution debate, and this seems
> to be the place to converse with passionate individuals on both sides
> of this fascinating issue. Here's my background:
>
> I am a 37-year-old technology trainer in the Chicago area. My formal
> training is in computer science, not in theology, cosmology, biology,
> or any other field especially useful to this discussion. I have a
> fondness for math and science, but nothing that reaches beyond what
> would be covered in a first-year college survey class.
>
> I am a Christian of the non-denominational Protestant variety. I
> accept the principle of the inerrancy of the Holy Bible in its
> original form as a matter of faith, as well as the principle that the
> Bible represents the divinely inspired revelation of the one God of
> the universe.
>
> Until recently, I've been an adherent of the 'old-earth' model that
> says that the biblical description of 6 days must be a metaphor for
> something else that fits better with scientific claims of multi-
> million-year-old fossils and multi-billion-year-old galaxies. Over
> the last year or so I've been increasingly persuaded by the idea that
> the plain meaning of the 6 Biblical days is just that - six literal 24-
> hour days.
>
> But, if it is true, (and a plain reading of the Bible makes it clear
> that its author believes it is true), then that means I need to
> rethink some of my concepts about the nature of the universe as I
> perceive it.
>
> So there you go. I'm wading into the deep end of the creationism/
> evolutionism swimming pool, looking to see if I can swim with the big
> kids.
>
> Mike
Hi, Mike. Welcome to T.O.
I see you accept Biblical inerrancy on faith. Faith is a good thing to have, and I certainly don't have anything against positions held by faith.
I am a Christian, who does not accept Biblical inerrancy, but my belief in God is also a matter of faith. I accept the science of evolution, and I believe that God made use of evolution as his means of creation. That too is a matter of faith to me.
I hope you can understand that it's possible to be a Christian, and accept the science of evolution as well. Whether or not you accept evolution is your own business. I do suggest you read Dr. Kenneth Miller's book "Finding Darwin's God". Miller is a devout Catholic who combines his scientific background with his religious beliefs. Again, whether or not you agree with Dr. Miller, I hope you can accept that such a position exists. One does not have to be an atheist to accept evolution.
DJT
Arkalen
Well, you said you accept the principle of Biblical inerrancy as a
matter of faith. That implies evidence doesn't come into it for you. In
that case, what's the problem ? You can agree that all the evidence
shows evolution (and cosmology) happened, and you still choose to
believe it happened definitely just because.
As long as you don't distort the science and don't impose your faith on
others, who cares.
>
> Mike
>
jillery
I like your recommendation as well. To which I add James Kugel's "How
to Read the Bible". ISTM the two complement each other.
Burkhard
> "On Mon, 06 Jun 2011 13:27:53 -0400, in article
One possible source is Galatians 5:4, though this is not about Adam
directly. Another possible source is as far as I recall in the
apocryphal book of wisdom
Mark Isaak
> Hi!
Welcome!
> [...]
> Until recently, I've been an adherent of the 'old-earth' model that
> says that the biblical description of 6 days must be a metaphor for
> something else that fits better with scientific claims of multi-
> million-year-old fossils and multi-billion-year-old galaxies. Over the
> last year or so I've been increasingly persuaded by the idea that the
> plain meaning of the 6 Biblical days is just that - six literal 24-
> hour days.
Aesop once wrote a story about a boy who cried "wolf" when there was no
wolf, repeatedly, until people stopped listening to him even when the
wolf came. The plain meaning of that story is that once, long ago, there
was such a boy who had such neighbors, and the story ended there. Do you
think, though, that Aesop might have intended something more with that
story? that he might want us to draw some lesson that could be applied
today, even if we live where wolves are not a problem?
I happen to agree with you that the plain reading of Genesis 1 is that
God created the world in six literal 24-hour days. And if I wanted the
Bible to be completely irrelevant to anybody's life, that is just how I
would interpret it.
--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) earthlink (dot) net
"It is certain, from experience, that the smallest grain of natural
honesty and benevolence has more effect on men's conduct, than the most
pompous views suggested by theological theories and systems." - D. Hume
Mark Isaak
> On Jun 6, 9:55 am, hersheyh <hershe...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> [...] Of course, the
>> metaphorically-challenged Biblical literalist claims that the authors
>> were not writing down ancient creation stories, but had a pipeline
>> directly from God. I see no reason to accept that than I do to accept
>> that Harold Camping has a direct pipeline to God.
>
> (Agent 86 mode)
>
> Would you believe an indirect pipeline that goes through Gene Scott? ;-)
Would you believe a chain of men passing a bucket, with Pagano's name on
the bucket?
Mike Lyle
You say this from time to time, and I think one of us has missed the
doctrinal point. 1 Corinthians and Romans were not written by Martin
Luther: "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made
alive." No Fall, no Christianity, whether Catholic or Reformed.
There's room, as always, for theological tinkering; but I don't think
the broad reason for the Atonement is in dispute between the
traditions.
--
Mike.
Ray Martinez
> Hi!
>
> This is my first post on talk.origins. I've recently decided to
> become more involved in the creation/evolution debate, and this seems
> to be the place to converse with passionate individuals on both sides
> of this fascinating issue. Here's my background:
>
> I am a 37-year-old technology trainer in the Chicago area. My formal
> training is in computer science, not in theology, cosmology, biology,
> or any other field especially useful to this discussion. I have a
> fondness for math and science, but nothing that reaches beyond what
> would be covered in a first-year college survey class.
>
> I am a Christian of the non-denominational Protestant variety. I
> accept the principle of the inerrancy of the Holy Bible in its
> original form as a matter of faith, as well as the principle that the
> Bible represents the divinely inspired revelation of the one God of
> the universe.
>
> says that the biblical description of 6 days must be a metaphor for
> something else that fits better with scientific claims of multi-
> million-year-old fossils and multi-billion-year-old galaxies. Over
> the last year or so I've been increasingly persuaded by the idea that
> the plain meaning of the 6 Biblical days is just that - six literal 24-
> hour days.
>
> But, if it is true, (and a plain reading of the Bible makes it clear
> that its author believes it is true), then that means I need to
> rethink some of my concepts about the nature of the universe as I
> perceive it.
>
> So there you go. I'm wading into the deep end of the creationism/
> evolutionism swimming pool, looking to see if I can swim with the big
> kids.
>
> Mike
Hi Mike, hope you stick around.
You don't need to re-think any Pentateuchal or science concepts. A
scriptural Old Earth is based on Genesis 1:1 through Genesis 1:2. The
latter verse preserves a record of pre-Adamic regression. From verse 3
onward is a RE-creation account. This is why God told Adam to RE-
plenish the Earth (as opposed to plenish). The creation days (re-
creation of the biosphere) do not, in any way, indicate a young Earth,
but a young biosphere. Our present biosphere (post-Flood) is also
young.
A word about evolution and Atheism:
Since no God exists, Atheists have no choice but to believe that
species originate species (evolution). This renders all of their
conclusions predetermined. Beware:The Evolutionists at this website
(Talk.Origins) exist to deny this self-evident fact. They love
Christians who bow their knee to Darwin at the expense of God, His Son
and the Bible. Richard Dawkins is famous for saying "Darwin made it
possible to be an intellectually fulfilled [A]theist." This is why all
Atheists accept, defend and promote evolution. I urge you to consider
these facts.
RM (Paleyan IDist-anti-evolutionist-Biblical Objectivist)
Burkhard
Really? The Hebrew says "u mil'u", which coems form the root "mala" I'd
say the primary meaning of mala is "to fill" - and this is also how
several translations other than the KJV translate it.
Dana Tweedy
Note that Ray is trying to establish a Biblical point by citing an English word, when the original text wasn't written in English. That should give you some idea of Ray's "scholarship".
> The creation days (re-
> creation of the biosphere) do not, in any way, indicate a young Earth,
> but a young biosphere. Our present biosphere (post-Flood) is also
> young.
>
> A word about evolution and Atheism:
Note too that Ray is making this up.
>
> Since no God exists, Atheists have no choice but to believe that
> species originate species (evolution).
Actually, atheists have many choices as to what to believe. Evolution, however is the most well established scientific explanation for the evidence. That's why many Christians, as well as other religionists accept evolution as well.
> This renders all of their
> conclusions predetermined.
Ray's assertion here is incorrect, and he's been shown why it's incorrect many times.
> Beware:The Evolutionists at this website
> (Talk.Origins) exist to deny this self-evident fact.
"Self Evident" is Ray's way of making an assertion he knows is wrong and can't support.
> They love
> Christians who bow their knee to Darwin at the expense of God, His Son
> and the Bible.
Of course, accepting a scientific theory is not "bowing one's knee" to anyone. Accepting evolution doesn't cause God any "expense".
> Richard Dawkins is famous for saying "Darwin made it
> possible to be an intellectually fulfilled [A]theist."
Richard Dawkins can say what he wants. That doesn't mean that one must be an atheist to accept the science of evolution.
> This is why all
> Atheists accept, defend and promote evolution.
Ray already knows that not all atheists accept, defend, or promote evolution. He keeps repeating this statement, even though he knows it's false.
> I urge you to consider
> these facts.
Note too that what Ray calls "facts" everyone else would call "unsupported and absurd opinions".
>
> RM (Paleyan IDist-anti-evolutionist-Biblical Objectivist)
Note too that Ray doesn't know anything about the positions he claims to represent, or oppose.
DJT
Fnord
Kermit
When I was going to the university in the 70s, my workout buddy was a
PhD student in microbiology. He taught me informally various
evolutionary science tidbits through the years. He was a devout
Christian, a Roman Catholic. He said that "Science was studying how
God does things."
Just repeating Dana above - this position exists, whether you end up
embracing it or not.
I am an atheist, but I saw no reason to distrust his science.
Kermit
Boikat
> On Mon, 06 Jun 2011 09:14:35 -0700, Frank J wrote:
> > On Jun 6, 9:55 am, hersheyh <hershe...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >> [...] Of course, the
> >> metaphorically-challenged Biblical literalist claims that the authors
> >> were not writing down ancient creation stories, but had a pipeline
> >> directly from God. I see no reason to accept that than I do to accept
> >> that Harold Camping has a direct pipeline to God.
>
> > (Agent 86 mode)
>
> > Would you believe an indirect pipeline that goes through Gene Scott? ;-)
>
> Would you believe a chain of men passing a bucket, with Pagano's name on
> the bucket?
But, they were holey buckets....
Boikat
Randy C
> Since no God exists, Atheists have no choice but to believe that
> species originate species (evolution).
Actually, and of course you already know this, evolution has NOTHING
to do witht existence or non-existence of God.
But it has quite a bit to do with the validity of various
interptetations of the Bible.
Ray obviously worships the Bible and doesn't give a s**t about God.
His beliefs are only consistent with God that is cruel, deceptive and
incompetent.
But that doesn't bother Ray in the least.
If you are a creationist - Ray filling the role of the prototype - it
is OK to imagine all sorts of flaws in God's character as long as you
can continue to believe that the Bibel is inerrant.
Ray secretly hates God but loves the Bible.
Frank J
Holey buckets, Batman! Isn't Pagano the one who proved geocentrism?
Frank J
At this point it's not looking likely. As you know, the "drive by" is
quite common. But if it makes you feel better, you can fantasize that
he was banned.
>
> You don't need to re-think any Pentateuchal or science concepts. A
> scriptural Old Earth is based on Genesis 1:1 through Genesis 1:2. The
> latter verse preserves a record of pre-Adamic regression. From verse 3
> onward is a RE-creation account. This is why God told Adam to RE-
> plenish the Earth (as opposed to plenish). The creation days (re-
> creation of the biosphere) do not, in any way, indicate a young Earth,
> but a young biosphere. Our present biosphere (post-Flood) is also
> young.
Are you ever going to tell us about those other biospheres?:
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_frm/thread/011a40bc7ac9d750?hl=en#
>
> A word about evolution and Atheism:
>
> Since no God exists, Atheists have no choice but to believe that
> species originate species (evolution).
What's to stop an atheist from believing that "kinds" all popped up
independently and have not since undergone any changes that you would
consider "microevolution"?
> This renders all of their
> conclusions predetermined. Beware:The Evolutionists at this website
> (Talk.Origins) exist to deny this self-evident fact. They love
> Christians who bow their knee to Darwin at the expense of God, His Son
> and the Bible.
Hmm. Not only are Michael Medved "DI-IDers", they want no parts of the
Son or the New Testament. Does that male them "atheists" in your book?
> Richard Dawkins is famous for saying "Darwin made it
> possible to be an intellectually fulfilled [A]theist." This is why all
> Atheists accept, defend and promote evolution. I urge you to consider
> these facts.
>
> RM (Paleyan IDist-anti-evolutionist-Biblical Objectivist)
What next - solipsist? A-la Average Joe? He was a leftie like you, as
you might recall.
John S. Wilkins
But the literalness of the fall as a singular historical event is
definitely at issue. Among Protestants as much as anyone else. Only
literalists think it had to go down as described in Genesis 3, and that
crosses all the theological divides.
--
John S. Wilkins, Associate, Philosophy, University of Sydney
http://evolvingthoughts.net
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre
gregwrld
I think Ray might've scared him away...
gregwrld
Mike Hammond
your - sheesh - 50 responses to my post.
-----------------------------------------
>> Why? Just because some religious folks who are ignorant of science insist on it?
I'm in agreement that some religious folks are ignorant of science.
Probably true that a lot of non-religious are the same way.
However, it seems unnecessary to assume that if someone has a
religious view that conflicts with the scientific consensus on the
nature of history, and wants to defend an alternative interpretation
of scientific data, that such a person is being ignorant.
To the question of why (I've been persuaded towards a 6 day
interpretation) - it seems to me that I've been ignoring what seems to
be the plain meaning of Genesis 1 and 2 (6 literal days > ~6000 year
old universe) solely because there is scientific data that suggests a
much, much older age. In other words, I've been working backwards
from scientific data, trying to force other interpretations into the
Bible to make the Bible match the data. I've decided to change my
approach to front-to-back - working from what "some religious folks"
suggest is a more faithful reading of the Bible, and working forward
to see what that would mean for consideration of the existing data
that is out there (on which I admit being woefully undereducated).
>> Why? What makes the Bible reliable? Don't say "God" because there is no
>> evidence that God had anything at all to do with the Bible.
That one is just a matter of faith for me. I just assume it's
reliable as my axiomatic starting point. My life experiences
corroborate statements I see in the Bible to such a sufficient degree
that I'll take the rest on faith. That said, I imagine this isn't the
a forum designed for debating the reliability of the Bible. I just
want to see what happens if I start from a 6-day creation, 6,000 year-
old universe perspective and then look at the data from that
perspective.
>> Why would you accept claims about the inerrancy of the Bible when the
>> clear, overwhelming evidence shows that the Bible is chock full of
>> fantasy stories, nonsense, wishful thinking and other untrustworthy
>> claims -- particularly if read in the modern "literal" sense? Modern
>> literalists have twisted the Bible beyond recognition, beyond sense.
I'm not overwhelmed, as of yet. I'll agree that there are stories
(Jonah and the 'fish', for a simple example) that seem to contradict
common sense. I'm unconvinced that there isn't some reasonable
explanation for each. But there's another topic for Talk.Theology
>> Bruce Salem is not surprised at your background.
Who's Bruce Salem?
>> Science is about testable hypotheses and evidence.
Totally agree.
>> If you prefer dogma that can't be verified and that is not
>> amenable to scientific scrutiny, there's nit much we can talk about.
That's an interesting one. I think that any assertion about the age
of the universe (or just the earth) is a kind of dogma that can't be
verified, but that nonetheless is amenable to scientific scrutiny. I
mean, the universe doesn't have a "born-on" date stamped into it
anywhere. There's no digital picture of the big bang. Similarly,
there's no digital photo of God creating the universe.
>> So called creation scientists insist that science actually supports their literal biblical views.
What's wrong with that? Evolutionary scientists insist that science
actually supports their evolutionary views. Heliocentric scientists
insisted that science supported their heliocentric views. Flat-earth
scientists insist...
Isn't it obvious that most scientists interpret evidence in a way that
confirms their views until they encounter data that absolutely can't
be reconciled with their views?
>> Unfortunately they can't produce any scientific evidence that supports their views. And neither can you.
I certainly can not - having no technical training in the relevant
fields. But perhaps they can. And here's the big one - perhaps
evolutionary-minded scientists can. Scientific data is scientific
data - it doesn't have a view. I think it's possible that
evolutionary scientists may one day find some piece of data that just
can't be reconciled with an old-universe perspective. Don't you?
>> The question is, should Genesis be interpreted as a news report -- that is, as a literally true,
>> factual account of a series of historical events -- or should it be
>> interpreted in a *non*-literal manner, perhaps as a metaphor or
>> something else?
Interesting question. I've been largely content with the 'metaphor'
description for some time, but I'm going to try to see what comes of
assuming the news report position.
>> If you don't think there's only one creation story, tell me, please: Which did God create first, humans or horses?
<snip>
>> The upshot is, *both* Genesis 1 *and* Genesis 2 *cannot* be literal, historical Truth, because by a literal,
>> historical reading, *those two chapters of Genesis CONTRADICT EACH OTHER*.
>> This is a bit of a problem for literal interpretation of Genesis,
not so?
I think it's an interesting puzzle, but I can only assume that
theologians have long ago found a satisfying explanation. If I was
researching horse fossils, maybe that would be something I would have
to explore, but until then, this isn't enough to make me throw out the
whole creation narrative.
>> Perhaps God is smart enough to use metaphors, or even speak in
>> parables which convey Truth even tho they aren't news reports. Or
>> perhaps not; you'll have to make that call yourself.
Agreed - and it's certainly true that the Bible uses metaphor and
parables to convey its principles. But that, on its own, doesn't give
me license to assume that the Genesis account is metaphorical.
>> I have never seen any reasonable argument that this interpretation is
>> essential to the core values and beliefs of Christianity. There are those,
>> some post here, who adhere to that and to more extreme views along the lines
>> that if you accept evolution that automatically makes you an atheist.
I've recently listened to a speaker who argued that critical Christian
beliefs about sin and death and redemption make no sense without a
literal 6-day creation. I haven't done the homework on that myself,
but it brought my attention to the fact that I've been ignoring the
possibility.
By the way, I don't think accepting evolution makes one an atheist.
>> I cannot see that even given the premise that the Bible is inspired by God
>> it is at all necessary for it to be taken literally.
Agreed. When the Bible says God shelters us under his wings, it
doesn't mean he's a giant chicken. Lots of metaphorical language in
the Bible.
>> Fallible men wrote it and since the various parts were written it has been translated and edited
>> many times and the context of the words as written is not the modern
>> context, so how you can say that every word is literally God's intent by
>> reading the modern meanings of the English words is beyond reason. This is
>> clearly illustrated every time the literalists cannot agree on the literal
>>meaning.
An interesting topic for Talk.BibleAuthorship. My original post
claims that the text is inerrant in its original form - and again, I'm
just going on faith for that one, supported by corroborating personal
experience. Of course translation problems occur with any language.
Bible scholars are forever digging into the original language,
consulting the original manuscripts, to figure out what was going on
linguistically. But I'd argue that when literalists can't agree on
the intent of the Bible, that says more about fallible literalists,
and less about the Bible.
>> The literalist view forces you to choose and the choice often taken is that
>> the Bible is authoritative on all things including science and thus any
>> science that contradicts it must be false. You then spend your life running
>> and hiding from the logical inconsistencies in the Book and between this
>> view and observable reality. It must be deeply troubling to have censor so
>> many observations and twist and turn to avoid yawning logical traps.
Forces you to choose? Agree. Asserting the Bible is true and
scientific observation doesn't mean what evolutionists argue it
means? Sure, why not? We're trying to answer unfathomable questions
of the nature of everything by scratching in the dust of a dinky
little planet in the middle of nowhere, cosmologically speaking.
Shouldn't we give each other a little bit of grace over the "yawning
logical traps?" Are you really asserting that evolution has no
yawning logical traps?
>> Keep your head above water by continuing to think and to observe. Would He
>> give you a good brain and then require you not to use it?
I don't think so. Somewhere in the Bible, God says to mankind, "Come,
let us reason together." I'm on board with that plan.
>> You raise an interesting question of theology: how do you go about
>> determining if one biblical interpretation is better than another?
That's easy - you go read the FAQs at Talk.Hermeneutics. Just
teasing.
<snip interesting discussion of Isaiah>
>> So, what is your argument why a plain reading should be preferred to a metaphorical (or folkloric) reading?
Not my argument, exactly - or at least, not yet. See my earlier
comment on consistency with certain New Testament statements, etc.
>> you're going to have to explain why He *cannot* have spoken metaphorically in Genesis, and why
>> he allowed the fabric of creation to contradict His account of it.
I'm not trying to argue that God cannot have spoken metaphorically in
Genesis (it's clear the Bible uses metaphor elsewhere), but just that
he also could have spoken plainly and directly, and that Genesis
mostly seems to contain the plain kind of speaking. Abraham went
here, he camped on such-and-such a hill, etc. Surely it could be
metaphorical, but it *could* also mean exactly what it says.
>> Most creationists resolve this by creating God in their image: if
>> they cannot image how God could use evolution to create mankind, then
>> God must not have been able to figure this out either and thus had to
>> resort to miracles. As theologies go, I think you can do better.
Interesting - I'm actually exploring the opposite problem. I think
that a lot of creationists are *too* imaginative - looking for
complicated ways of making the Bible describe a billions-of-years-old
creation and compensate for scientific data about evolution and
cosmology, instead of poking at the data to see if the data can be
described in a way that matches what I'm calling a plain reading of
Genesis.
>> My own preferred counterexample to plain literalism is this:
>> Song of Solomon 4:4 - "Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for
>> an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of
>> mighty men."
>>Now if read literally...
Let me stop you right there a second. It seems clear to me that this
text is using simile to make a comparison suggesting the strength of
the neck of the person being described. There's lots of text in the
Bible that uses standard literary devices (metaphor, simile, etc.) to
make vivid and interesting comparisons. I don't think this is a
counterexample, except inasmuch as you should not take text literally
that plainly is not meant to be.
>> The question now remains: which
>> parts of the Bible are literal and which are metaphorical, allegorical
>> or analogical? If someone can come up with a way to do this
>> principledly, more power to them.
I believe that is the art and science of hermeneutics. I have a
friend who teaches a class on it at Moody Bible Institute here in
Chicago. But to answer your question, if you're suggesting I think
all Biblical text should be read literally, rest assured I don't.
>> Hi Mike, welcome on board!
<snip>
>> I am looking forward to see what questions you may ask. I may attempt to
>> reply too if I think I have anything of value to say.
Thanks! Look forward to chatting with you. I agree with everything
you said, though I'd qualify your comments only by suggesting that
while faith ought not to trump facts and reason, I feel it should
inform what one believes about facts and the way in which one chooses
to reason.
>> So do you find that multiple lines of independent evidence converge on
>> an age of the universe, earth and life in the mere 1000s of years? And
>> are you prepared to critically analyze that evidence - all of it, not
>> just the parts you like - and support it on it's own merits,
>> independent of any "weaknesses" you find in the data of mainstream
>> science (and OECs)?
Ooh - I'm way out of my depth there. I have done no original
research, and read little of the existing research on these multiple
lines of scientific exploration. Am I prepared to critically analyze
that evidence? Yes.
>> And would you have reached that conclusion had you never read the Bible?
Hugely important question. No. I don't think just by looking at
existing evidence I would come to a conclusion of 1000s of years. I
can agree that the majority of the scientific community is acting in
good faith when they analyze data in front of them and determine
millions of years for rocks and billions of years for the universe. I
doubt, absent a presumption that the Bible is a trustworthy document,
that I would come up with a history of thousands of years for the
universe. Just knowing the speed of light and the distance to the
stars would be enough to rule out 1000s of years - IF that was all I
had to work with. But that's just the point. What happens if you
start (as I'm doing) from a presumption that the Bible is revealed
Truth, and then look at the data to see where it fits the Genesis
account and where it does not? I don't really know yet, and I'm
looking to find out.
>> While you're wading, have you posted this to the "big kids" at OEC and
>> ID sites too?
This site was referenced by a conservative political commentator (yet
staunch evolutionist, interestingly) as a good place to engage in the
evolution/creation discussion. So far, I'm comfortable I've made a
good choice. Are you recommending other locations to start a thread?
>> Oops, I missed the "evolutionism." I'm smelling Loki.
The only thing that saved me from Googling that was the movie "The
Mask". Heh! No mischief meant here - I've been above-board about my
background, my reasoning framework and my motivations. Was I unclear
that I'm exploring the creationism end of the creationism/evolution
debate?
>> If you "accept" the inerrancy of the Bible as a matter of faith then you
>> need to be careful not to stray into idolatry - worshipping the Bible,
>> rather than God.
I can dig that.
>> Also, the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy is of little interpretative
>> value; as interpretation of the Bible is not inerrant the Bible might as
>> well not be inerrant.
Drifting into theological weeds a little bit, I'd argue that the
doctrine of Biblical inerrancy is extremely useful, inasmuch as that
allows the ability of clearly obvious parts of the Bible to illuminate
the interpretation of areas that are less clear. But again, I'm just
taking inerrancy as a given - I can't prove it, and I'm not really
planning to try. I just want to see what happens if one carries
forward that presumption.
>> And, as a Christian you would be expected to place more weight on what
>> you are supposed to believe are the works of God (the world) than on the
>> words of men (the Bible, and in particular interpretations of the
>> Bible).
Would be expected by whom? And don't forget, I'm operating under the
working axiom that the Bible is divinely inspired - that is, it was
written down by men, but accurately represents exactly what God
intended his created beings to know.
>> I do not believe that it is possible to reconstruct the intended meaning
>> of Genesis at this remove, but as mentioned above, the internal
>> contradictions are a strong hint that it wasn't intended to be taken
>> literally.
I think theologians can argue in good faith that there are different
internally-consistent meanings for the Genesis account, and can accept
that theologians may never agree on the "intended meaning". But I
think that at least one of the possible meanings is the obvious one,
and I plan on exploring the implications of that belief system.
>> If you are to reject evidence at to the nature of the world in favour of
>> an interpretation of the Bible then you are stumbling into bibliolatry.
Now there we're hitting a principle that I find extremely intriguing.
I would not use the Bible to argue that the result of some scientific-
method-based, peer reviewed experiment is not producing the data that
it produces. But I think it's perfectly reasonable to reason from
both the naturalistic/evolutionary perspective and the creationist
perspective about the meaning of the data that such an experiment
provides. I think both perspectives are vulnerable to the trap of
arguing that any experimental data point proves anything about "the
nature of the world".
>> The name "Mike Hammond" is rather familiar, hasn't he posted here before?
>> But Mikes are rather common on Usenet and I might be confusing him
>> with the guy from Jurassic Park.
Ha! No relation to John Hammond of Jurassic Park, nor to John Hays
Hammond, the inventor of radio-controlled guidance systems (sigh).
I don't think I've posted here before, but I won't rule it out either.
>> Merely rethinking won't do.
>> Only giving up thought altogether will work.
Oh, come now. There's no room for rational thought for someone
operating from a young-earth creationist point of view when evaluating
the results of scientific experimentation?
>> But if you don't mind me asking, why this regression?
Well, of course you can expect I don't accept the premise that this
new committment to look at evidence for origins as a regression, but
since you asked...
The church I attend put on a series of presentations some months back
laying out the argument for young-earth creationism, and I found it
intriguing. As said earlier, I've subscribed to the creation model of
origins just out of the nature of being a Christian (grew up Roman
Catholic, if anyone cares). This was the first time I saw a forceful
argument that the literal interpretation actually mattered to one's
understanding of Christian faith, and wasn't just an interesting
afterthought. So, if that's true, I decided, it was time to get in
the conversation.
>> Probably because YEC sells better to the "masses." That's why the OECs
>> who bought into the ID scam discourage discussing the "when"
>> questions.
Not sure I agree there. YEC (hey, I'm picking up the lingo
already...) seems to me to be a shrinking, or even minority opinion
within the Christian community, and in my experience it makes
Christian friends I've talked to uncomfortable about the idea.
Frankly, it's a little vulnerable and embarrassing to be arguing for
an age for the universe that is 6 orders of magnitude different from a
large body of committed scientists with impressive credentials in
their resumes. I think a lot of Christians are running from YEC as
fast as they can. I know of a pastors of churches who are OEC. Some
impressive theologians are OEC. For what it's worth.
>> Do not claim to have an open mind if you are committed to being a
>> young earth creationists (YEC). One of the common mistakes that the
>> anti science creationist faction makes to to lie about what they
>> believe and their motivations. That may sound sad, but it is common
>> to have people claiming to be agnostic and then have them spouting
>> Bible verses when they run into reality.
Here's the state of my mind - you may consider it closed-minded. I'm
going to stand on the idea that YEC is Truth, and see where that
leads. That may lead to some difficult-to-accept propositions, and
I'll have to deal with that when it comes up. You're right that
creationists hold something of a Get-Out-Of-Yawning-Logical-Gaps Free
card, inasmuch as I'm arguing for analyzing evidence from a
perspective that is, admittedly, supernatural. At the last resort,
the creationist can always fall back to the position that the science
is wrong, the Bible is right, and we should wait another couple of
thousand years for the science to catch up with the truth of the
Bible. Part of my exploration is to see where the frontiers of that
thought-space lie - at what point(s) do I have to say, "There's no
logical reason for that outside of naturalistic evolution" or else say
"Well, God must have wanted it that way". In the interest of full
disclosure, I'll admit that my bias naturally leans toward the second
option in those situations. I think it's perfectly obvious to point
out that there's a lot that we don't know, and logical to posit that
there are some things that we either can't know, or will never know
before the sun boils away the seas.
>> There is no real science worth spit that backs up YEC. Negative
>> arguments against some other position don't count for much if
>> anything. Anyone that solves real life problems knows that fact.
Well, here's the thing. I don't think that any YEC should have any
reason to doubt that "real science" is not fairly arriving at the data
it's producing. The amount of carbon-14 in a rock is the amount of
carbon-14 in a rock, and there's no Bible verse anyone can quote that
will say it isn't. But what's interesting is how we interpret that
number. If an experiment produces a data point, and it supports
creationism but not evolutionism, does that on its own not make it
"worth spit"? What if that experiment supports both points of view?
Is science only "worth spit" if it supports the naturalistic point of
view?
>> The Bible is not a scientific work.
Agreed.
>> It is basically worthless in this debate unless you want to argue theology
Don't agree. I'm treating the Bible as the reference point for my
argumentation, with all the logistical difficulties that entails. I'm
not really equipped to argue theology, just as I'm not trained to
measure the speed of light.
>> and this may not be the best venue for that.
Perhaps. So far this crowd seems to be fair-minded and willing to
converse. That's good enough for me.
>> What you need is actual evidence that the world might
>> have been created in a week only a few thousand years ago.
I suppose that's what the creation scientists are up to. But I'm
interested in exploring to what extent existing data (whoever fairly
produced it) supports the YEC perspective. Certainly I won't be doing
any original research on this subject, so I'll need to rely on my
assessment of the results produced by others. That puts me at
something of a disadvantage perhaps, but a common one.
>> Basically you have to present your model and the evidence to back it
>> up. If you know any science you know that you basically have nothing,
>> so that is where you are stuck as a starting point.
My model, for the purposes of this exploration, is YEC. My argument
is that the existing data can be interpreted in a way that is
compatible with YEC.
>> We can all agree that it is possible that some god created the world yesterday after
>> you supposedly wrote this post, with all our memories intact, and all
>> the evidence that something existed before yesterday, but that isn't science.
That brings up an interesting point. What role, if any, do you think
science can play in the process of "supporting" a supernatural claim?
It's perfectly evident what role it can play in arguing against such a
claim. Is any argument that supports a supernatural claim inherently
unscientific, and why?
>> Good luck.
I doubt this will have anything to do with luck, but thank you.
>> On the one hand, there is the question as to why anyone would think
>> that the Bible was meant to be taken this way. What in the Bible is
>> there that says that? There are several places which assert a non-
>> literal reading.
Not to be ponderous about it, but - that's what it says. Evening and
morning, the second day... On the third day... yadda yadda. I think
that's a pretty good reason to posit that this is how it was meant to
be taken. The plain meaning is clear, though scientific data
currently argues it's ridiculous.
Certainly there are areas of the bible that suggest - or even demand -
non-literal readings. But I think it's perfectly tenable that Genesis
need not be one of those. It's rational to argue that there is a
plain meaning in Genesis that is unambiguous (plus or minus questions
about horses and the like).
>> On the other hand, there is enough in the Bible which has been taken
>> to support geocentrism. While things like the literal, ordinary 24
>> hour day have been questioned by people like Augustine, it seems that
>> no one questioned the daily motion of the Sun around the Earth for
>> some 2000 years (500 BC to AD 1500 or so).
I'll may have to look into that one at some point. I'm a little
curious about what the Biblical support for heliocentrism was, but
heliocentrism/geocentrism is really not the issue that I'm interested
in exploring. Whatever that biblical support was, I doubt that it was
as explicit as the very detailed account of the other elements of
creation described in Genesis. I have to wonder if geocentrists of
their day had similar concerns about the integrity of other areas of
the Bible if their understanding of the Genesis account was
compromised. Food for thought, perhaps, but I'll let the science
historians tackle that one.
>> Hi, Mike. I'm an atheist, I used to be a Christian.
>> I think that what I want to say to you is that to appreciate and enjoy
>> and take stewardship of the world that we live in, which I recommend
>> as our role in it, you should understand clearly what it is, which
>> isn't necessarily what an anonymous document written before science
>> was popular says it is.
Maybe, but let's see what happens when operating from the presumption
that the Bible is an eyewitness account from the one individual who
claims perfectly true knowledge of origins.
>> There is a "tradition" that the first five "books" of the bible were
>> all written by Moses, but real scholarship finds that they were put
>> together from multiple documents at a time much later than whenever
>> Moses is supposed to have lived.
My understanding is 'real scholarship' of the text of the Bible is a
similarly wide-ranging discussion of conservative and liberal
positions about authorship and so on. Interesting, but outside the
scope of what I want to explore.
>> My atheist opinion is that there isn't a need to look for the six
>> biblical days to be other than the ordinary period of time of that
>> name, but that the story simply isn't true: quite a simple answer. I
>> imagine that for you it will be difficult to accept that God's
>> revelation contains fictions, fables, and untruths - it was for me -
Well, sure. I'm operating from the principle that it's all correct.
Accepting that list of things contradicts the fundamental axiom of my
study.
>> so let me suggest to you that whether any one part of the bible is
>> true or not, doesn't necessarily matter, but only when it becomes
>> relevant.
Stepping into slippery areas of amateur theology again, I'd argue that
if any part of the bible were completely, unambiguously false, then
the whole document becomes suspect as a basis of a worldview. At that
point, it's a book that may have true statements in it, or ideas that
are worth putting to use, but then it becomes just another self-help
book.
>> (Also, when Jesus tells stories, are they all true
>> stories?) We've got at least one someone here who professes that the
>> sun orbits around the earth, not the other way around, although I
>> think they may be shamming for fun; I'm going to guess that you aren't
> of that party.
Ha! No - I'm perfectly happy with heliocentrism. Were Jesus'
parables recount actual events? I'm not sure it matters. It's a
bonus if they are (though that's probably historically unprovable),
but no loss to the teaching principles in the stories if they are
not. To me, that's another interesting debate for the theologians.
>> A proper understanding of the nature of the universe and of the origin
>> of the species of living things on the Earth is important now if we
>> hope to continue living on the Earth ourselves - or off it - because
>> humans are now crowding many, many of the world's millions of species
>> into extinction - once they're gone, they're gone, and that's bad
>> stewardship - and if we /don't/ kill them all off in the end, then
>> it's rather likely that somewhere in outer space there's an asteroid
>> that will: those fellows hit us from time to time, awfully hard,
>> exactly (well, more or less) like in those movies. These are just a
>> couple of the issues that we should pay attention to, and we have to
>> set the bible aside to do it.
Wow. Totally disagree with that last statement. Take away the
Bible's directives to be good stewards of the Earth, and you lose a
big incentive for a lot of people to care about the environment. Not
saying that there's no other source for that instinct, but isn't it
arguable that one of the big reasons for protecting other species (and
humans) from extinction is because God created them?
>> Anyway, let's briefly look at the six days. One of my favourite
>> glitches in the story is that God creates plants on land but not in
>> the water. (As far microscopic microbes, I'll let him create after
>> "heaven and earth" and before he invented days: it doesn't say that
>> that happened straight away, and the bible author surely didn't know
>> that microbes exist.)
>> Another is that the sky gets light in the day and dark at night well
>> before the Sun is created, whereas it's fairly well accepted nowadays
>> that the Sun /makes/ the sky light in the daytime. Incidentally, the
>> Earth turns in space in about 23 hours 56 minutes (the siderial day);
>> because the Earth also orbits around the Sun, the time from "Sun
>> overhead" to "Sun overhead" is different, and of course more
>> important, for practical purposes.
Sure. Space travel, having accurate calendars, stuff like that. I'm
with you there. As to the other things, my goal isn't really to go
into detailed defenses of every element of the Genesis account. For
the purposes of my effort, it's adequate to say that the Genesis
account can be considered a legitimate description of the origin of
the all things, and makes statements in whose light current evidence
can be evaluated.
>> In fact, the universe has existed, gradually developing, since an
>> origin about 13.7 billion years ago.
Okay - that's a big one. In what sense is that a fact? I'd agree
that scientists have a consensus view that the origin of the universe
was 13.7 billion years ago. But that's very different from stating it
as fact. Facts are directly observable things that come out of
repeatable experiments. Experiments don't tell you the age of
something - age isn't an inherent characteristic of objects. You
can't take apart an object until you get to the place where its age is
stored. The best scientists can hope for is to produce data points,
and then argue the interpretation of those data points to support
particular models. But those interpretations can be flawed (see: Flat
Earthers)
>> the Sun has been burning for about five billion years and is good for another five (or, I'm sure I
>> read somewhere, getting overall very gradually hotter, making Earth's
>> orbit uninhabitable - when the seas evaporate it's all over - in a
>> mere one billion years - but that could be just me), Earth itself
>> basically finished building about 4.5 billion ybp (years before
>> present, or specifically before 1950 - it's to do with radioactive
>> isotope dating), and for about five-sixths of the time since then, it
>> had either nothing, or nothing but the microscopic microbes, living on
>> it - and no air fit for us to breathe for a long while, either; life
>> that's large enough to make proper fossils is comparatively recent in
>> appearance, notably in the "Cambrian explosion", a series of
>> developments that took place a mere 0.6 billion years ago. Dinosaurs
>> showed up about 230 million years ago, and you've probably heard the
>> rest.
None of us has samples of the air from 4.5 billion years ago, or of
ocean water, or soil samples. All we have is today's air, water, and
soil. Anything that takes existing data points and abstracts
backwards in time is going to be limited by the assumptions about what
those data points say about the past. The further back you go, the
more unlikely it is that your assumptions account for all the events
that may have occurred in the past. You state a lot of things
confidently here, and they make a very reasonable narrative given the
data that scientists have collected, but I wouldn't classify any of
them as facts.
>> I am not sure you are in the right place.
>> The question of whether the author of Genesis
>> intended to "days" in the first creation story to
>> refer to periods of 24 hours, is a theological question
>> and/or a question of literary history.
Agreed. I don't intend to debate that point, except tangentially.
>> The question of whether the first creation story
>> in Genesis, however interpreted, should be considered
>> a journalistic account is theological.
Sure, but nothing stops me from evaluating existing origins
scholarship against the claims of that story.
>> The question of whether the first creation story in
>> Genesis should be considered to be the truth
>> [as opposed to other creation stories, I like the Raven
>> myself but I have always had a liking for trickster gods]
>> is a fundamental question of what "truth"
>> is and how one determines it.
Agreed.
>> These questions are only peripherally related to
>> the evolution/creation (there's a false dichotomy
>> if I ever saw one) debate. (Not that you won't get
>> lots of opinions here, some even well informed.).
>> The question of how well the first creation story
>> in Genesis fits with mainstream scientific theory
>> (badly, or if the "days" are considered to be 24 hours,
>> very badly) has a simple answer as there is not
>> much debate on what the mainstream scientific
>> theory is (the debate centres on whether it is
>> "true").
Forgive me, but I think that was a non-sequitur. It sounds like you
said there that the question of how well Genesis matches mainstream
thinking is answered by the fact that everybody knows what the
mainstream thinking is. How does that answer the question?
>> Most of the debate around here centres on the question
>> of the consistency or lack thereof of mainstream
>> scientific thinking. (e.g. is the theory of Natural Selection
>> self-consistent?; is the observed fossil record
>> consistent with Evolution?) It is not clear that you
>> want to discuss these issues. Even if you do
>> I would suggest you first visit the talk.origins
>> faqs and perhaps "anwersingenesis.org" to see what
>> has already been said. (But if you present an
>> argument from "answers in genesis" without
>> checking the talk.origins faqs you will be
>> mocked)
I did take a quick scan of the FAQs, and found the perspectives there
slanted rather heavily in favor of the evolutionist perspective.
Perhaps that shouldn't have surprised me, but I was expecting a more
even-handed treatment of the creationist view. Forgive me if I tread
on ground that's been covered before.
>> As has been pointed out by others, the two versions of Genesis have
>> obvious and blatant contradictory features (in addition to being
>> contradicted by empirical reality -- the universe is not, in fact, a
>> mere few thousand years old, life on this planet was not 'poofed' into
>> existence in a single day).
Slow down a second there. Empiricism rests on the idea of sensory
experience as the only source of true knowledge. With which of your
senses do you detect the age of the universe, or the duration of time
within which the Earth was formed? Those aren't factual statements
you're making - that's your belief system talking, right?
>> So the question arises, were the people
>> who wrote it incapable of reasoned thought? Were they stupid? Or was
>> it written in such a context that the literal truth-ness or
>> consistency of the text does not matter? I would argue for the
>> latter. They weren't stupid. They were capable of reasoned thought.
>> Their description has a definite "message", but one that differs from
>> the literal interpretation, which is unsurprising for a creation myth.
I don't see why that conclusion is necessary. Genesis tells a very
deliberate, detailed creation story. It's not stupid to suggest it
was written that way because that's exactly how it happened.
>> The people who wrote this down were living in a world in which what we
>> now consider to be inanimate objects like the "sun", the "moon", and
>> the "earth" were all gods and the rulers of countries/tribes had
>> arrogated unto themselves the title of "demi-god". Often these 'gods'
>> interfered with humans and each demanded their own sacrifices to
>> prevent catastrophe (disease, famine, slavery or involuntary
>> servitude). The tribe of the Israelites, OTOH, had only one god and
>> rejected the idea of many gods and human demi-gods. So, in their
>> creation myth (myth is not a perjorative term; it is often a way of
>> telling a story, particularly in tribes and before writting, often
>> with relevant lessons -- consider it a parable, which is also a story
>> whose literal truth or falsness doesn't matter) they insist on the one
>> god, who 'created' the sun, the moon, the earth, and the creatures
>> they saw among them. The "meaning" of such a myth is that the heavens
>> and earth were, explicitly, not independent gods. Moreover, in their
>> myth, *all* humans were created from the same 'dust'. There were no
>> demi-gods that came down from the heavens to rule over ordinary
>> humans. [That much of the writing down appears to come through times
>> of enslavement might have something to do with this viewpoint. The
>> Torah likely was a written version of an older oral tradition (around
>> 1000 BC), so it is not surprising that there is some variation in the
>> text. Ever play "telephone"?]
We're largely on the same page there. My (again amateur) theology
suggests that God meant for the story to deliberately exclude the
possibility of other gods, specifically sun gods, moon gods, etc.
>> In such a context, the fact that this creation myth does not match
>> modern scientific knowledge is irrelevant, as is the internal
>> contradictions in the text. And the message that is being sent about
>> the distinction between what is "real" and what is "god" and the
>> equality of humans (albeit, there is the typical tribal inequality in
>> the role of women) is still a valid "message" that the metaphorically-
>> challenged Biblical literalist completely ignores. Of course, the
>> metaphorically-challenged Biblical literalist claims that the authors
>> were not writing down ancient creation stories, but had a pipeline
>> directly from God. I see no reason to accept that than I do to accept
>> that Harold Camping has a direct pipeline to God.
And I'm not really asking you to. I'm operating from a framework that
says the authors were writing down *the* ancient creation story, but
it's not my purpose to demand that other people see things the same
way.
By the way, Harold Camping is an embarrassment. A plain reading (I'm
fond of those) of the Bible should tell him what he's doing is
pointless.
>> This /is/ an OEC and ID "site". All opinions may be discussed here,
>> at your own risk, of very heavy criticism.
I'll consider myself fairly warned. Thanks!
>>>> But, if it is true, (and a plain reading of the Bible makes it clear
>>>> that its author believes it is true), then that means I need to
>>>> rethink some of my concepts about the nature of the universe as I
>>>> perceive it.
>> Or your position on the Bible's inerrancy.
Perhaps you noticed that useful *IF* at the beginning of my
sentence... :)
>> I think it can be said fairly that Christians rarely doubted that
>> events described in the bible had historically happened just as they
>> were described, until, in particular, evidence of geology, rather than
>> biology, forced investigators to consider that natural processes on
>> the Earth have been operating for far longer than bible dates for the
>> age of the world allow. I don't know whether people were separately
>> worried about other incidents such as God stopping the motion of the
>> Sun one day (and the Moon), which heliocentrists would have to
>> understand as stopping the motion of the Earth - which is about 1000
>> miles an hour on the equator - without other chroniclers around the
>> world noticing and mentioning it.
So far so good - I'm with you.
>> Christians then started to consider that either various kinds of
>> exception applied, or that the Genesis origin was some kind of
>> metaphor, allegory, or fable. They did this principally because there
>> was very strong evidence that it wasn't journalism. There may have
>> been a secondary recognition that God is constructing the world in
>> rather the same way that Old Macdonald constructs his farm in the
>> song, and that isn't a literal account, either.
Jews and Muslims must consider the same things too, I expect.
Mormons, even?
Not to dig too deep into OldMacdonaldism, but I hope we can agree that
we can't scientifically prove or disprove that Old Macdonald did or
did not, in fact, have a farm at some point in the past. Though I do
have an interesting analysis of audio samples of kids making clapping
sounds that strongly suggest a creation date for Macdonald's farm in
the days just before some sort of catastrophic worldwide flood.
Clearly, that's what all the the EEE! Aaaaaiii! EEE! Aaaaiiii! Oh!
was about.
>> And now, you are wrestling with several questions, which you might be
>> mistaking for one question: did the bible writer mean actual days in
>> the context of the story? And did he believe that it was an accurate
>> description of the origin of the world and of living things? And is
>> it an accurate description?
>> I propose (1) yes and (2 and 3) no - it was only intended as a fable.
Not sure how hard I'm wrestling, exactly. For the purpose of
argumentation, I'm starting from default positions of Yes for each of
those three questions.
>> And I propose that you are trying to avoid that conclusion not because
>> you are comfortable with it being true and not a fable, but because
>> you fear that either God, or your pastor, or your friends at church,
>> will hold it against you. Or because you fear that in fact the devil
>> is using reasonability and your own intelligence to mislead you into
>> doubting God's words.
>> But these are not reasonable arguments in a question of fact.
Just speaking personally, I find myself wondering if I've allowed
myself to ignore the plain meaning of the opening chapter of the book
that defines my spiritual existence simply because there's a loud
crowd of passionate people declaring it can't be true. I'm exploring
the implications of the possibility that I was being too hasty.
Agreed that none of that is directly relevant to the subject of
analyzing data about origins. Just sharing what's animating me.
>> You sound very much like Kurt Wise: An intelligent man who understands
>> the science, but who also sees so many contradictions with Biblical
>> inerrancy that he has to make a definite choice between one and the other.
>> And like Kurt Wise, you've chosen to stick with Biblical inerrancy.
Just read the Wikipedia blurb - thanks for the link. I agree that I'm
thinking much in the same way he purportedly does.
>> There's no real way around that. Modern science and Biblical inerrancy
>> are incompatible. You can't reconcile modern geology, astronomy, and
>> astrophysics with the Universe being created in 6 24 hour days.
Well, there's the big question to me. Can I stand on the inerrancy of
the Bible and confidently state that all the data around me can be
interpreted in that context? And if not, where's the limitations of
that perspective?
>> Unless you resort to Omphalos-like solipsism, in which God created the
>> Universe in 6 24-hour days by making it *look* like it's far older--a
>> cosmic fake, in other words.
>> But Omphalos requires a God capable of massive deception--would you
>> really want to pray to such a God? And should we emulate such a God by
>> being liars and deceivers ourselves?
The problem, to me, is taking fallible mankind's data as the starting
point, and asking what's wrong with a perfect and holy creator God. A
hardened YEC would probably turn that around the other way, wondering
why we even entertain the idea that the universe is billions of years
old when the Bible plainly says it's only 6000 years? A determined
literalist view might include a statement like the following: "The
universe *does* look 6000 years old because it is 6000 years old.
What's wrong with the way we are measuring it (or wrong with our our
assumptions about the meaning of our measurements) that gives an
answer that is wrong by six orders of magnitude?"
>> Take a look at this book:
>> James L. Kugel
>> The Bible As It Was
>> Belknap Press of Harvard U. Press, 1997
>> It gives a sampling of the ways that the Bible was read by Christians
>> and Jews for a few centuries around the turn of the "common era". They
>> were very imaginative.
I may at some point, but my goal is not to take a survey of all the
imaginative interpretations of the Bible, but to explore the
scientific implications of a very particular one, and not a very
imaginative one, at that. Thank you for the kind suggestion.
>> I see you accept Biblical inerrancy on faith. Faith is a good thing to have, and I certainly don't have anything against positions held by faith.
>> I am a Christian, who does not accept Biblical inerrancy, but my belief in God is also a matter of faith. I accept the science of evolution,
>> and I believe that God made use of evolution as his means of creation. That too is a matter of faith to me.
>> I hope you can understand that it's possible to be a Christian, and accept the science of evolution as well.
I do understand that. I don't think authentic Christian belief exists
exclusive of evolutionary beliefs, but I worry about the implications
of accepting "on faith" the belief that all life arose spontaneously
in contradiction of (what seems to me) clear Biblical statements that
it didn't.
>> Whether or not you accept evolution is your own business. I do suggest you read Dr. Kenneth Miller's book "Finding Darwin's God".
>> Miller is a devout Catholic who combines his scientific background with his religious beliefs. Again, whether or not you agree with Dr. Miller,
>> I hope you can accept that such a position exists. One does not have to be an atheist to accept evolution.
Agreed. But you may need to deliberately set aside explicit Biblical
descriptions of origins to do so.
>> Well, you said you accept the principle of Biblical inerrancy as a
>> matter of faith. That implies evidence doesn't come into it for you. In
>> that case, what's the problem ? You can agree that all the evidence
>> shows evolution (and cosmology) happened, and you still choose to
>> believe it happened definitely just because.
>> As long as you don't distort the science and don't impose your faith on
>> others, who cares.
To me, it's axiomatic that if Genesis is reporting a literal 6-day
creation, the sum total of all accurately gathered evidence will fit
into the Genesis picture. So evidence definitely comes into the
picture. I don't want to deny that existing data provides support for
the evolutionary view, necessarily. I want to argue that it also fits
into a creationistic view.
>> Aesop once wrote a story about a boy who cried "wolf" when there was no
>> wolf, repeatedly, until people stopped listening to him even when the
>> wolf came. The plain meaning of that story is that once, long ago, there
>> was such a boy who had such neighbors, and the story ended there. Do you
>> think, though, that Aesop might have intended something more with that
>> story? that he might want us to draw some lesson that could be applied
>> today, even if we live where wolves are not a problem?
Well of course. Aesop's fables were all written with that intent. In
a lot of cases, the lesson is named explicitly following the story.
If you're implying by analogy that God meant for there to be something
more to the story of which day He created what - then yes. I'd argue
that God meant for us to know that He cares a great deal for mankind
that He wanted him to know with some specificity how He created the
universe. I'd argue that He has a special care for humanity, and that
when He speaks, things happen as he said. I could go on and on, but
you take my point.
>> I happen to agree with you that the plain reading of Genesis 1 is that
>> God created the world in six literal 24-hour days. And if I wanted the
>> Bible to be completely irrelevant to anybody's life, that is just how I
>> would interpret it.
I mean, that's the big challenge, right? Is Genesis 1 still
legitimate for use as a demonstration of God's sovereign will and care
for humanity, or is it an outdated relic of an era of unaccountable
superstition? That's a rhetorical question - if you were wondering.
>> You don't need to re-think any Pentateuchal or science concepts. A
>> scriptural Old Earth is based on Genesis 1:1 through Genesis 1:2. The
>> latter verse preserves a record of pre-Adamic regression. From verse 3
>> onward is a RE-creation account. This is why God told Adam to RE-
>> plenish the Earth (as opposed to plenish). The creation days (re-
>> creation of the biosphere) do not, in any way, indicate a young Earth,
>> but a young biosphere. Our present biosphere (post-Flood) is also
>> young.
Interesting perspective - old universe, young earth. Thanks for the
idea - I'm going to try it the old-fashioned way and see how it goes.
Young universe, young earth.
>> A word about evolution and Atheism:
>> Since no God exists, Atheists have no choice but to believe that
>> species originate species (evolution). This renders all of their
>> conclusions predetermined. Beware:The Evolutionists at this website
>> (Talk.Origins) exist to deny this self-evident fact. They love
>> Christians who bow their knee to Darwin at the expense of God, His Son
>> and the Bible. Richard Dawkins is famous for saying "Darwin made it
>> possible to be an intellectually fulfilled [A]theist." This is why all
>> Atheists accept, defend and promote evolution. I urge you to consider
>> these facts.
There's that troublesome word *fact* again. I'll take your opinions
about the other visitors to this site under advisement - much obliged.
---------------------
Okay - I think that addresses all the principal points you all brought
up.
Let me go ahead and open the floodgates. Where do I start reading the
results of contemporary origins-related research? Naturally, my
inclination is towards those places where the science directly bears
on areas that conflict with Biblical assertions in the Genesis
account.
Mike
Ernest Major
<8d5aa74f-7c1f-4c0f...@h9g2000yqk.googlegroups.com>, Mike
Hammond <mct...@gmail.com> writes
>>> If you don't think there's only one creation story, tell me, please: Which did God create first, humans or horses?
> <snip>
>>> The upshot is, *both* Genesis 1 *and* Genesis 2 *cannot* be literal, historical Truth, because by a literal,
>>> historical reading, *those two chapters of Genesis CONTRADICT EACH OTHER*.
> >> This is a bit of a problem for literal interpretation of Genesis,
>not so?
>
>I think it's an interesting puzzle, but I can only assume that
>theologians have long ago found a satisfying explanation.
What you are overlooking is that the satisfying explanation is that the
creation stories are allegorical, not literal history.
> If I was researching horse fossils, maybe that would be something I
>would have to explore, but until then, this isn't enough to make me
>throw out the whole creation narrative.
But an unsubstantiated (not to mention contraindicated by internal
evidence) hypothesis that Genesis 1 and 2 is literal history is enough
to make you throw out 50% of science?
--
alias Ernest Major
Arkalen
> Okay - I'm going to try to address each of the substantive points in
> your - sheesh - 50 responses to my post.
You're popular ^^
>
> -----------------------------------------
>
>>> Why? Just because some religious folks who are ignorant of science insist on it?
>
> I'm in agreement that some religious folks are ignorant of science.
> Probably true that a lot of non-religious are the same way.
> However, it seems unnecessary to assume that if someone has a
> religious view that conflicts with the scientific consensus on the
> nature of history, and wants to defend an alternative interpretation
> of scientific data, that such a person is being ignorant.
> To the question of why (I've been persuaded towards a 6 day
> interpretation) - it seems to me that I've been ignoring what seems to
> be the plain meaning of Genesis 1 and 2 (6 literal days> ~6000 year
> old universe) solely because there is scientific data that suggests a
> much, much older age. In other words, I've been working backwards
> from scientific data, trying to force other interpretations into the
> Bible to make the Bible match the data. I've decided to change my
> approach to front-to-back - working from what "some religious folks"
> suggest is a more faithful reading of the Bible, and working forward
> to see what that would mean for consideration of the existing data
> that is out there (on which I admit being woefully undereducated).
Well, good luck on that endeavor ! The sources for creation "science"
aren't lacking. Do you know about the Talk Origins website ? It has
links to many creationist sites and once you've read those if you're
curious you can find rebuttals in the various FAQs.
But I'm afraid the reason most people aren't Young-Earth Creationists is
that the data *can't* be interpreted to show a 6000 year-old Earth. Not
in good faith, not when you are aware of the data. But you can look and
decide for yourself.
One thing though : instead of looking at how the presuppositions of
individual people color their interpretation of the data, consider the
evolution of the scientific understanding itself. People didn't always
think the Earth was old, let alone 5 billion years old. Most of the
scientists a few centuries ago were European, and thus Christian. They
believed in God and their default assumption would be that the Bible was
accurate. Geologists didn't start with the assumption the Earth was old
and then interpreted the data that way. They started with the assumption
that the Earth was young, or with no assumption at all. They changed
their minds because the data pointed to an old Earth and couldn't be
interpreted otherwise.
>
snip
>>> So called creation scientists insist that science actually supports their literal biblical views.
>
> What's wrong with that?
Just the bit where they're wrong. And the bit where they don't do actual
science - most creationist "research" institutions explicitly say that
the Bible trumps evidence. That's not science.
> Evolutionary scientists insist that science
> actually supports their evolutionary views. Heliocentric scientists
> insisted that science supported their heliocentric views. Flat-earth
> scientists insist...
>
> Isn't it obvious that most scientists interpret evidence in a way that
> confirms their views until they encounter data that absolutely can't
> be reconciled with their views?
>
>>> Unfortunately they can't produce any scientific evidence that supports their views. And neither can you.
>
> I certainly can not - having no technical training in the relevant
> fields. But perhaps they can. And here's the big one - perhaps
> evolutionary-minded scientists can. Scientific data is scientific
> data - it doesn't have a view. I think it's possible that
> evolutionary scientists may one day find some piece of data that just
> can't be reconciled with an old-universe perspective. Don't you?
It's certainly possible. Highly unlikely, because the old-universe
perspective has a LOT of data supporting it, so that one unreconcilable
piece of data would also be contradicting all that other data... But
it's possible, sure.
The relevant thing is, no such piece of data has come up to date.
snip
>
>>> If you don't think there's only one creation story, tell me, please: Which did God create first, humans or horses?
> <snip>
>>> The upshot is, *both* Genesis 1 *and* Genesis 2 *cannot* be literal, historical Truth, because by a literal,
>>> historical reading, *those two chapters of Genesis CONTRADICT EACH OTHER*.
> >> This is a bit of a problem for literal interpretation of Genesis,
> not so?
>
> I think it's an interesting puzzle, but I can only assume that
> theologians have long ago found a satisfying explanation. If I was
> researching horse fossils, maybe that would be something I would have
> to explore, but until then, this isn't enough to make me throw out the
> whole creation narrative.
Well you should probably look that stuff up - the long-ago theologians,
and the horse fossils.
snip
>
>>> Fallible men wrote it and since the various parts were written it has been translated and edited
>>> many times and the context of the words as written is not the modern
>>> context, so how you can say that every word is literally God's intent by
>>> reading the modern meanings of the English words is beyond reason. This is
>>> clearly illustrated every time the literalists cannot agree on the literal
>>> meaning.
>
> An interesting topic for Talk.BibleAuthorship. My original post
> claims that the text is inerrant in its original form - and again, I'm
> just going on faith for that one, supported by corroborating personal
> experience. Of course translation problems occur with any language.
> Bible scholars are forever digging into the original language,
> consulting the original manuscripts, to figure out what was going on
> linguistically. But I'd argue that when literalists can't agree on
> the intent of the Bible, that says more about fallible literalists,
> and less about the Bible.
Note that "the original manuscripts" don't really exist. We don't have
"copy 0" of the Bible.
>
>>> The literalist view forces you to choose and the choice often taken is that
>>> the Bible is authoritative on all things including science and thus any
>>> science that contradicts it must be false. You then spend your life running
>>> and hiding from the logical inconsistencies in the Book and between this
>>> view and observable reality. It must be deeply troubling to have censor so
>>> many observations and twist and turn to avoid yawning logical traps.
>
> Forces you to choose? Agree. Asserting the Bible is true and
> scientific observation doesn't mean what evolutionists argue it
> means? Sure, why not? We're trying to answer unfathomable questions
> of the nature of everything by scratching in the dust of a dinky
> little planet in the middle of nowhere, cosmologically speaking.
> Shouldn't we give each other a little bit of grace over the "yawning
> logical traps?" Are you really asserting that evolution has no
> yawning logical traps?
As far as I know it doesn't. There are many unknowns about what
organisms and trait evolved how and when but those are unknowns, not
logical inconsistencies. What logical traps do you see in the theory ?
In general a scientific theory with "yawning logical traps" is a
scientific theory that's in big, big trouble. It's why physicists are
ripping their hair out over how relativity and quantum physics don't
work together.
>
snip
>
>>> The name "Mike Hammond" is rather familiar, hasn't he posted here before?
>>> But Mikes are rather common on Usenet and I might be confusing him
>>> with the guy from Jurassic Park.
>
> Ha! No relation to John Hammond of Jurassic Park, nor to John Hays
> Hammond, the inventor of radio-controlled guidance systems (sigh).
> I don't think I've posted here before, but I won't rule it out either.
Well as I said Mikes are a dime a dozen here, and someone pointed out
there was a George Hammond posting at some point, and you're acting
strangely for a Loki so I retract the suggestion.
>
>>> Merely rethinking won't do.
>>> Only giving up thought altogether will work.
>
> Oh, come now. There's no room for rational thought for someone
> operating from a young-earth creationist point of view when evaluating
> the results of scientific experimentation?
I understand why you're reacting this way, I really do, but I assure you
people who say things like that aren't pre-judging. It's very much a
conclusion come to after many, many observations. But by all means look
at the evidence and attitudes on both sides yourself and come to your
own conclusions.
>
snip
>
>>> There is no real science worth spit that backs up YEC. Negative
>>> arguments against some other position don't count for much if
>>> anything. Anyone that solves real life problems knows that fact.
>
> Well, here's the thing. I don't think that any YEC should have any
> reason to doubt that "real science" is not fairly arriving at the data
> it's producing. The amount of carbon-14 in a rock is the amount of
> carbon-14 in a rock, and there's no Bible verse anyone can quote that
> will say it isn't. But what's interesting is how we interpret that
> number. If an experiment produces a data point, and it supports
> creationism but not evolutionism, does that on its own not make it
> "worth spit"?
It absolutely does. That experiment would revolutionize biology. No such
experiment has happened however.
> What if that experiment supports both points of view?
> Is science only "worth spit" if it supports the naturalistic point of
> view?
Science can't do anything but support the naturalistic point of view
because it studies nature. If it can be observed, measured, experimented
on, it's amenable to science. If it isn't it's not.
snip
>>> We can all agree that it is possible that some god created the world yesterday after
>>> you supposedly wrote this post, with all our memories intact, and all
>>> the evidence that something existed before yesterday, but that isn't science.
>
> That brings up an interesting point. What role, if any, do you think
> science can play in the process of "supporting" a supernatural claim?
> It's perfectly evident what role it can play in arguing against such a
> claim. Is any argument that supports a supernatural claim inherently
> unscientific, and why?
It's unscientific because if science can study it, it becomes natural.
Consider it. If scientists studying psychics over many well-designed
studies found out that some people *are*, say, telepathic. The next step
would be to analyse those people's brains and bodies to find what the
difference is between them and non-psychic people. See what their brain
does when they're doing telepathy. Try and detect some physical
mechanism for how they're communicating - some kind of particle ? A new,
unknown one ? Quantum entanglement ? They could find out if telepathy is
hereditary, if it's genetic, if there are environmental factors. How
telepathy works : is there a distance effect ? What kind of things can
be communicated ? Can it be blocked ? Can it be enhanced ?
Maybe scientists would be baffled by some of those questions. But you'll
agree they would be *scientific* questions. Telepathy would have become
a recognized scientific fact. Which would make it no longer
supernatural. Just like transmutation used to be a mystical alchemical
thing and now it's part of atomic theory.
As I see it, the supernatural existing isn't really about specific
things existing - it's the concept that things exist that are not
understandable by science. So the supernatural is inherently
unscientific. Specific supernatural claims, however, are not.
>
>>> Good luck.
>
> I doubt this will have anything to do with luck, but thank you.
English really needs an equivalent for "Gambatte" or "Bon courage" :)
>
snip
>
>>> the Sun has been burning for about five billion years and is good for another five (or, I'm sure I
>>> read somewhere, getting overall very gradually hotter, making Earth's
>>> orbit uninhabitable - when the seas evaporate it's all over - in a
>>> mere one billion years - but that could be just me), Earth itself
>>> basically finished building about 4.5 billion ybp (years before
>>> present, or specifically before 1950 - it's to do with radioactive
>>> isotope dating), and for about five-sixths of the time since then, it
>>> had either nothing, or nothing but the microscopic microbes, living on
>>> it - and no air fit for us to breathe for a long while, either; life
>>> that's large enough to make proper fossils is comparatively recent in
>>> appearance, notably in the "Cambrian explosion", a series of
>>> developments that took place a mere 0.6 billion years ago. Dinosaurs
>>> showed up about 230 million years ago, and you've probably heard the
>>> rest.
>
> None of us has samples of the air from 4.5 billion years ago, or of
> ocean water, or soil samples. All we have is today's air, water, and
> soil.
We have rocks that could never form in the presence of oxygen for example.
> Anything that takes existing data points and abstracts
> backwards in time is going to be limited by the assumptions about what
> those data points say about the past. The further back you go, the
> more unlikely it is that your assumptions account for all the events
> that may have occurred in the past. You state a lot of things
> confidently here, and they make a very reasonable narrative given the
> data that scientists have collected, but I wouldn't classify any of
> them as facts.
snip
>
>>> Well, you said you accept the principle of Biblical inerrancy as a
>>> matter of faith. That implies evidence doesn't come into it for you. In
>>> that case, what's the problem ? You can agree that all the evidence
>>> shows evolution (and cosmology) happened, and you still choose to
>>> believe it happened definitely just because.
>>> As long as you don't distort the science and don't impose your faith on
>>> others, who cares.
>
> To me, it's axiomatic that if Genesis is reporting a literal 6-day
> creation, the sum total of all accurately gathered evidence will fit
> into the Genesis picture. So evidence definitely comes into the
> picture. I don't want to deny that existing data provides support for
> the evolutionary view, necessarily. I want to argue that it also fits
> into a creationistic view.
I'm only responding here because it's your reply to my post, but all
you've said earlier pretty much answers my questions. I can only again
encourage you to look at all the evidence, look at creationist sites,
look at the scientific responses, and see where that leaves you.
As for Talk Origins being biased on the evolution side, yes it is.
That's the thing : you're assuming that there are two sides and the
scientific truth might be somewhere in the middle. That's it's a matter
of interpretation. Given your lack of knowledge on the topic it's an
understandable assumption, but as you look you'll find out it simply
isn't the case. Creation science isn't. Creationists have no good
scientific arguments. Says otherwise is not being even-handed, it's
being biased towards the creationists.
But of course don't take my word for it. Find it out for yourself.
snip
>
> Okay - I think that addresses all the principal points you all brought
> up.
If I can make a suggestion : I don't know why you chose to respond to
everything in one post, but it's not very convenient for people who
respond to you, to have to scroll through all that and lose who's saying
what. Do you have something against threading ?
iaoua iaoua
> Hi!
>
> This is my first post on talk.origins. I've recently decided to
> become more involved in the creation/evolution debate, and this seems
> to be the place to converse with passionate individuals on both sides
> of this fascinating issue. Here's my background:
>
> I am a 37-year-old technology trainer in the Chicago area. My formal
> training is in computer science, not in theology, cosmology, biology,
> or any other field especially useful to this discussion. I have a
> fondness for math and science, but nothing that reaches beyond what
> would be covered in a first-year college survey class.
>
> I am a Christian of the non-denominational Protestant variety. I
> accept the principle of the inerrancy of the Holy Bible in its
> original form as a matter of faith, as well as the principle that the
> Bible represents the divinely inspired revelation of the one God of
> the universe.
>
> Until recently, I've been an adherent of the 'old-earth' model that
> says that the biblical description of 6 days must be a metaphor for
> something else that fits better with scientific claims of multi-
> million-year-old fossils and multi-billion-year-old galaxies. Over
> the last year or so I've been increasingly persuaded by the idea that
> the plain meaning of the 6 Biblical days is just that - six literal 24-
> hour days.
>
> Naturally, the math and science nerd in me rebels against that idea.
> that its author believes it is true), then that means I need to
> rethink some of my concepts about the nature of the universe as I
> perceive it.
>
> evolutionism swimming pool, looking to see if I can swim with the big
> kids.
>
> Mike
Hi Mike,
nice to meet a fellow nondenominational Christian computer scientist.
I think one of the best ways of interpreting a troublesome text like
Genesis 1:1-2:4 is to stand back and look at the larger picture and
ask what the basic general teaching point of the text was. The points
which come out of it are clearly. God was also a great artisan that
took pride in his work, in fact he made everything, but even he rested
on the seventh day and, therefore, so should we.
And so, in a nutshell Mike, that seems to me to be the main point of
the account. We do well to bear in mind to who the account was
directed. It was directed to an ancient god fearing society one of
whose most important 10 laws was a prohibition of work on the seventh
day and a command to rest. And this is clearly the main point of this
text. To explain to the ancients why they should rest on the seventh
day.
JC
jillery
<snip to point>
> To the question of why (I've been persuaded towards a 6 day
> interpretation) - it seems to me that I've been ignoring what seems to
> be the plain meaning of Genesis 1 and 2 (6 literal days > ~6000 year
> old universe) solely because there is scientific data that suggests a
> much, much older age. In other words, I've been working backwards
> from scientific data, trying to force other interpretations into the
> Bible to make the Bible match the data. I've decided to change my
> approach to front-to-back - working from what "some religious folks"
> suggest is a more faithful reading of the Bible, and working forward
> to see what that would mean for consideration of the existing data
> that is out there (on which I admit being woefully undereducated).
To take an apparently insurmountable problem and look at it from a
different angle, that could be a useful approach. I agree that
changing your assumptions of what is and isn't true will almost
inevitably change the conclusions you reach. To test your assumptions
and compare the results, that's the kind of thing you do when you
doubt what is true.
However, you write "I've been persuaded towards a 6 day
interpretation". Past tense. This says your testing is done and you
made your decision, at least for the moment. That's what I asked
about, what you already did, the process that convinced you to set
aside the scientific evidence you once assumed to be valid, and to
accept in its stead a plain-speaking interpretation of Genesis.
I understand if you're uncomfortable answering such a personal
question in a public forum, but I hope you will reconsider.
Rolf
> In message
> <5d12a837-5e3e-4f4c...@r1g2000yqg.googlegroups.com>,
> Mike Hammond <mct...@gmail.com> writes
>> Hi!
>>
>> This is my first post on talk.origins. I've recently decided to
>> become more involved in the creation/evolution debate, and this seems
>> to be the place to converse with passionate individuals on both sides
>> of this fascinating issue. Here's my background:
>>
>> I am a 37-year-old technology trainer in the Chicago area. My formal
>> training is in computer science, not in theology, cosmology, biology,
>> or any other field especially useful to this discussion. I have a
>> fondness for math and science, but nothing that reaches beyond what
>> would be covered in a first-year college survey class.
>>
>> I am a Christian of the non-denominational Protestant variety. I
>> accept the principle of the inerrancy of the Holy Bible in its
>> original form as a matter of faith, as well as the principle that the
>> Bible represents the divinely inspired revelation of the one God of
>> the universe.
>
> you need to be careful not to stray into idolatry - worshipping the
> Bible, rather than God.
>
> value; as interpretation of the Bible is not inerrant the Bible might
> as well not be inerrant.
>
> you are supposed to believe are the works of God (the world) than on
> the words of men (the Bible, and in particular interpretations of the
> Bible).
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-vDhYTlCNw
>>
>> Until recently, I've been an adherent of the 'old-earth' model that
>> says that the biblical description of 6 days must be a metaphor for
>> something else that fits better with scientific claims of multi-
>> million-year-old fossils and multi-billion-year-old galaxies. Over
>> the last year or so I've been increasingly persuaded by the idea that
>> the plain meaning of the 6 Biblical days is just that - six literal
>> 24- hour days.
>
> between the two creation stories in Genesis is a strong hint that the
> authors did not intend the "plain" (literal) meaning.
>>
It sems more reasonable to think that what we see really are two different
creation stories:
The creation myth of the Canaanites speaks of the dry, arid land that is
being blessed by their God with rain and wells breaking forth.
Contrary to that; in Babylon floods were the dangerous problem. Their
creation myth, tells that it began with waters all over, then with land
rising out of the water.
I belive it has been established that the Bible is a collection of texts
created over a long time in history. Moses did not write the Bible. In his
law f.i., we find much that is quite similar to the Code of Hammurabi.
Gilgamesj is the 'original' Noah.
The prophets of Israel created a sacred text for the Israelites; it is clear
that Yahweh was not the only god; but he was God and warlord of the tribes
of Israel. He was jealous of the other gods.
>> Naturally, the math and science nerd in me rebels against that idea.
>> But, if it is true, (and a plain reading of the Bible makes it clear
>> that its author believes it is true), then that means I need to
>> rethink some of my concepts about the nature of the universe as I
>> perceive it.
>
> I do not believe that it is possible to reconstruct the intended
> meaning of Genesis at this remove, but as mentioned above, the
> internal contradictions are a strong hint that it wasn't intended to
> be taken literally.
>
> If you are to reject evidence at to the nature of the world in favour
> of an interpretation of the Bible then you are stumbling into
> bibliolatry.
>>
Rolf
> Hi!
>
[snip]
> But, if it is true, (and a plain reading of the Bible makes it clear
> that its author believes it is true), then that means I need to
> rethink some of my concepts about the nature of the universe as I
> perceive it.
[snip]
I have read many books by Erich von Däniken and a plain reading makes it
clear that he believes it is all true.
Should I rethink all my concpets about how mankind arose on this planet?
I have also read Adamski's flying saucers book. a plain reading makes it
clear that he believes it is all true, including the aliens bases on the
back side of the moon. Should I rethink ... ?
No, I prefer to think, and use all available facts as input for my thoughts.
Facts for the existence of God: none.
Facts for the Flood: none.
Facts for exodus from Egypt: none. (because that exodus is a metaphor for
something quite different)
Facts for Young Earth: none.
Facts for very old Earth: plenty. (Ice ages, Norwegian Fjords, same process,
live on Greenland today. continental drift, plate tectonics.
Literalism has corrupted the message actually contained in the Bible. Short
version: It is a matter of spirit and the soul of man, in this life, here
and now. The afterlife people are dreaming of is an illusion; the afterlife
is your life after you have realized the meaning of the message. That makes
you free, your 'sins' are forgiven.
The creation of monotheism created a problem by merging the two gods into
one. The creator of the universe is an illusion; a creation of the ancient
mind's desire to make sense out of his obervations. Therefore all the gods
of the ancients; they didn't know what forces were ruling the world.
Thunder and ligtning: Thor in his chariot with his hammer; rains, winds ...
You need to read books, books, books. Brace yourself for years of study.
>
> Mike
Rolf
Very immoral. See where it has got us. And that is just the beginning.
Rolf
You mean you can ignore all the evidence? Isn't that something like a mental
harikiri?
Stuart
> Okay - I'm going to try to address each of the substantive points in
> your - sheesh - 50 responses to my post.
We appreciate that.
>
> >> Science is about testable hypotheses and evidence.
>
> Totally agree.
>
> >> If you prefer dogma that can't be verified and that is not
> >> amenable to scientific scrutiny, there's nit much we can talk about.
>
> That's an interesting one. I think that any assertion about the age
> of the universe (or just the earth) is a kind of dogma that can't be
> verified, but that nonetheless is amenable to scientific scrutiny. I
> mean, the universe doesn't have a "born-on" date stamped into it
> anywhere. There's no digital picture of the big bang. Similarly,
> there's no digital photo of God creating the universe.
Depends on what you mean by *verified*. If by verification you mean
eyewitness testimony, then yes it is unverified by that definition.
But if
thats your definition, you will find out that it leads to epistemical
nihilism.
Should criminals convicted based solely on forensic evidence be
released
from prison? After all, nobody saw them commit their crimes.
Likewise, should any of them be sprung on the basis of DNA evidence?
>
> >> So called creation scientists insist that science actually supports their literal biblical views.
>
> What's wrong with that?
They fail repeatedly to demonstrate that.
Evolutionary scientists insist that science
> actually supports their evolutionary views. Heliocentric scientists
> insisted that science supported their heliocentric views.
Flat-earth
> scientists insist...
Insistence isn't enough. You must present an unbroken chain of logic
that goes from the evidence to support your interpretation. And you
must consider
all of the available evidence, and not omit evidence that makes you
uncomfortable.
>
> Isn't it obvious that most scientists interpret evidence in a way that
> confirms their views until they encounter data that absolutely can't
> be reconciled with their views?
So long as they are not omitting evidence that contradicts their
theory. Harping
on some evdience that supports one's view while at the same time
ignoring evidence
that doesn't is a good way to get a bad reputation.
>
> >> Unfortunately they can't produce any scientific evidence that supports their views. And neither can you.
>
> I certainly can not - having no technical training in the relevant
> fields. But perhaps they can.
I've been posting here for over 15 years. It hasn't happened yet.
And here's the big one - perhaps
> evolutionary-minded scientists can. Scientific data is scientific
> data - it doesn't have a view. I think it's possible that
> evolutionary scientists may one day find some piece of data that just
> can't be reconciled with an old-universe perspective. Don't you?
Sure. Science is always provisional. Thats why it isn't dogma. Should
we find a Pre-Cambrian
rabbit we will need to alter our theories as to the history of life on
Earth. By defintion
a Scientrific theory must be falsifiable. However, there is a big
difference between being
falsifiable and falsified. By discarding theories no longer supported
by evidence is how sceince
makes progress in the sense that we have increased our understanding
of how nature works and
that we have been able to use that knowledge for the betterment of
mankind.
This is why in thousands of years Religion hasn't made progress.
There's no objective way to
determine whether or not a religion is wrong or right.
The fact that there are multiple lines of evidence converging on the
Universe being
incredibly ancient doesn't suggest it is young is remotely possible
that it is young.
Science has demondstrated the idea of an Earth 6000 years old or a
Noachian deluge is false. The only
recourse is to invoke *miracles* that then take such explanantions out
of the realm of science.
Stuart
Burkhard
> Okay - I'm going to try to address each of the substantive points in
>
> >> Why? What makes the Bible reliable? Don't say "God" because there is no
> >> evidence that God had anything at all to do with the Bible.
>
> That one is just a matter of faith for me. I just assume it's
> reliable as my axiomatic starting point. My life experiences
> corroborate statements I see in the Bible to such a sufficient degree
> that I'll take the rest on faith. That said, I imagine this isn't the
> a forum designed for debating the reliability of the Bible. I just
> want to see what happens if I start from a 6-day creation, 6,000 year-
> old universe perspective and then look at the data from that
> perspective.
>
Ultimately, you'll find the two issues difficult to separate for two
reasons: While it is possible (trivially) to reconcile the data (any
data) with a 6 day creation (the 6000 years are nowhere mentioned in
the bible and the result of assumption rich inferences) if you are
willing to make sufficient ad hoc assumptions and loosen all
explanatory constraints, this has not just scientific costs (it
results in very bad science) but also theological costs, it results in
really odd theology. The type of deity you get this way is a trickster
god in the tradition f Coyote or Ananzi, who either made the earth
look older than it is to deceive us, or interferes like the Spaghetti
Monster with our senses every time we make a measurement.
Secondly, the resulting epistemological nihilism also affects the
bible - the very same arguments that you will need to explain away the
scientific data as interpreted also apply to everything you think to
know about the bible. Maybe you just "think" to read that book, but in
reality stare at a black pyramid, and some deity fiddles with your
senses. Or you have to accept that the interpretation that the bible
is just say 400 years old is as compatible with the "data points" you
mention as the interpretation tat the earth is 6000 years old is
consistent with the scientific data - and for the same reason.
>
> That's an interesting one. I think that any assertion about the age
> of the universe (or just the earth) is a kind of dogma that can't be
> verified, but that nonetheless is amenable to scientific scrutiny. I
> mean, the universe doesn't have a "born-on" date stamped into it
> anywhere. There's no digital picture of the big bang. Similarly,
> there's no digital photo of God creating the universe.
There is also no photo of the building of the Cathedral at Reims.
Should we therefore conclude that it might be just 200 years old?
There is no photo of someone writing the first version of the bible -
is therefore the theory that it was written 300 years ago as good as
the one that it was written 3000 years ago?
>
> >> So called creation scientists insist that science actually supports their literal biblical views.
>
> What's wrong with that? Evolutionary scientists insist that science
> actually supports their evolutionary views. Heliocentric scientists
> insisted that science supported their heliocentric views. Flat-earth
> scientists insist...
>
> Isn't it obvious that most scientists interpret evidence in a way that
> confirms their views until they encounter data that absolutely can't
> be reconciled with their views?
>
> >> Unfortunately they can't produce any scientific evidence that supports their views. And neither can you.
>
> I certainly can not - having no technical training in the relevant
> fields. But perhaps they can. And here's the big one - perhaps
> evolutionary-minded scientists can. Scientific data is scientific
> data - it doesn't have a view. I think it's possible that
> evolutionary scientists may one day find some piece of data that just
> can't be reconciled with an old-universe perspective. Don't you?
In the most abstract sense of "may", yes. We just don't have any
reason to believe they will. And of course, they could as well find
data that points to a one week old universe, a 400 year old universe,
a 311 trillion 40 billion years old universe (would make some Hinduist
happy). Pick a number, any number, as far as "may" is concerned. Just
doesn't help us now, and leads to precisely nothing
Good! And very true I'd say
>
> >> I cannot see that even given the premise that the Bible is inspired by God
> >> it is at all necessary for it to be taken literally.
>
> Agreed. When the Bible says God shelters us under his wings, it
> doesn't mean he's a giant chicken.
Pity. it would finally explain where the orphic egg came from.
> Lots of metaphorical language in
> the Bible.
>
> Forces you to choose? Agree. Asserting the Bible is true and
> scientific observation doesn't mean what evolutionists argue it
> means? Sure, why not? We're trying to answer unfathomable questions
> of the nature of everything by scratching in the dust of a dinky
> little planet in the middle of nowhere, cosmologically speaking.
> Shouldn't we give each other a little bit of grace over the "yawning
> logical traps?" Are you really asserting that evolution has no
> yawning logical traps?
Logical gaps? Not that I'm aware of. Empirical ones? Plenty, like any
theory worth studying
> >> And would you have reached that conclusion had you never read the Bible?
>
> Hugely important question. No. I don't think just by looking at
> existing evidence I would come to a conclusion of 1000s of years. I
> can agree that the majority of the scientific community is acting in
> good faith when they analyze data in front of them and determine
> millions of years for rocks and billions of years for the universe. I
> doubt, absent a presumption that the Bible is a trustworthy document,
> that I would come up with a history of thousands of years for the
> universe. Just knowing the speed of light and the distance to the
> stars would be enough to rule out 1000s of years - IF that was all I
> had to work with. But that's just the point. What happens if you
> start (as I'm doing) from a presumption that the Bible is revealed
> Truth, and then look at the data to see where it fits the Genesis
> account and where it does not? I don't really know yet, and I'm
> looking to find out.
We know since Lakato's criticism of Popper (at the latest) that it
is always possible in principle to protect ones core axioms by more
and more protective layers of ad hoc assumptions, exceptions etc to
make any data fit. If this is all that you look for, you can stop
there. if you also want theories that are marginally useful,and also a
methodology that is consistent across your own approach to make sense
of the world, (e.g. you don;t believe, rally, that your great-
grandfather was a lizard from alpha Centauri, even though this too can
be made consistent with the data) , then you'll have problems
>
> Now there we're hitting a principle that I find extremely intriguing.
> I would not use the Bible to argue that the result of some scientific-
> method-based, peer reviewed experiment is not producing the data that
> it produces. But I think it's perfectly reasonable to reason from
> both the naturalistic/evolutionary perspective and the creationist
> perspective about the meaning of the data that such an experiment
> provides. I think both perspectives are vulnerable to the trap of
> arguing that any experimental data point proves anything about "the
> nature of the world".
Not sure what you mean here. I would say you will fall in exactly that
trap - sensible theories are constraint by more than the abstract
data, if you abandon these constraints, you can indeed make the data
fit pretty much everything.
>
> >> There is no real science worth spit that backs up YEC. Negative
> >> arguments against some other position don't count for much if
> >> anything. Anyone that solves real life problems knows that fact.
>
> Well, here's the thing. I don't think that any YEC should have any
> reason to doubt that "real science" is not fairly arriving at the data
> it's producing. The amount of carbon-14 in a rock is the amount of
> carbon-14 in a rock, and there's no Bible verse anyone can quote that
> will say it isn't. But what's interesting is how we interpret that
> number. If an experiment produces a data point, and it supports
> creationism but not evolutionism, does that on its own not make it
> "worth spit"?
No, it makes it a candidate for the Nobewl. But no such data point has
been found.
>What if that experiment supports both points of view?
Then for the purpose of the question, it is a badly designed
experiment.
> Is science only "worth spit" if it supports the naturalistic point of
> view?
>
>
> My model, for the purposes of this exploration, is YEC. My argument
> is that the existing data can be interpreted in a way that is
> compatible with YEC.
And trivially some, if you assume e.g. an all powerful and
mischievous being that plays tricks with us, or if we are all brains
in a tank, or... any other logically consistent narrative that
accounts trivially for all possible data.
>
> >> We can all agree that it is possible that some god created the world yesterday after
> >> you supposedly wrote this post, with all our memories intact, and all
> >> the evidence that something existed before yesterday, but that isn't science.
>
> That brings up an interesting point. What role, if any, do you think
> science can play in the process of "supporting" a supernatural claim?
Depends what you mean with this. There is Artur Clarkes famous dictum
that
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
magic". You can reverse engineer that to some extend, and start with a
claim that was originally supernatural, and as science progresses
turns out to be explainable. In the process, I'd say it changes its
nature and simply becomes natural. So for theology, I'd say that is
pretty much the worst that can happen. Which is why I find the idea of
creationist and hangers on to scientifically prove theological
statements utterly bizarre and ultimatly self defeating.
On another thread, Suzanne is a good example - she came up with an
explanation of biblical Manna as a fungus. I know that several
conservative Christians think along the same line and claim that
"science has proven the bible correct" whenever such an identification
is made. My own answer woudl be: Hello? Assuming you are right, you
have just _dis_proven the bible, for what your thought was a miracle
was a perfectly natural event that a primitive hunter-gatherer society
badly recorded.
On theological grounds, I very much prefer miracles to be miracles,
supernatural supernatural, and science to be science. A radicalised
version of Gould's NOMA. Once you mix science with the supernatural,
religion will always lose - either by being disproved ("this is not
possible" or by reduced to soemthing perfectly natural "this did
happen, but no big deal, it was perfectly natural".
> It's perfectly evident what role it can play in arguing against such a
> claim. Is any argument that supports a supernatural claim inherently
> unscientific, and why?
See above
> >> In fact, the universe has existed, gradually developing, since an
> >> origin about 13.7 billion years ago.
>
> Okay - that's a big one. In what sense is that a fact? I'd agree
> that scientists have a consensus view that the origin of the universe
> was 13.7 billion years ago. But that's very different from stating it
> as fact. Facts are directly observable things that come out of
> repeatable experiments.
So it is not a fact that Washingtom won the American war of
independence, or that your great great great grandfather and his wife
were male and female, and capable of interbreeding?
> Experiments don't tell you the age of
> something - age isn't an inherent characteristic of objects. You
> can't take apart an object until you get to the place where its age is
> stored. The best scientists can hope for is to produce data points,
> and then argue the interpretation of those data points to support
> particular models.
I don;t think "age" is in this respect different from any
otherproperty. all properties are, ultimatly, inferred.
Fine, then there is no such thing as facts, and epistemological
nihilism follows. The workld was created last Thursday, at noon.
> I did take a quick scan of the FAQs, and found the perspectives there
> slanted rather heavily in favor of the evolutionist perspective.
> Perhaps that shouldn't have surprised me, but I was expecting a more
> even-handed treatment of the creationist view. Forgive me if I tread
> on ground that's been covered before.
>
> >> As has been pointed out by others, the two versions of Genesis have
> >> obvious and blatant contradictory features (in addition to being
> >> contradicted by empirical reality -- the universe is not, in fact, a
> >> mere few thousand years old, life on this planet was not 'poofed' into
> >> existence in a single day).
>
> Slow down a second there. Empiricism rests on the idea of sensory
> experience as the only source of true knowledge. With which of your
> senses do you detect the age of the universe, or the duration of time
> within which the Earth was formed? Those aren't factual statements
> you're making - that's your belief system talking, right?
You have just shown that (certain forms of ) empiricism are untenable.
Welcome to the 18th century... but that does not mean that all
theories are equally plausible origin any meaningful sense "belief
systems".
Debatable at the very least. There seem to be some pretty strong
traces of older, polytheistic religions in Genesis. "And God said,
`Let _us_ make man in _our_ likeness and let them have dominion over
the fish of the sea..." "might" just be a plural majestatis, but could
also be meant literally - depends on the interpretation of the data...
Or even more strongly, Genesis 3:22: "Behold the man has become as
one of us to know good and evil, and now lest he put forth his hand,
and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live forever...." as
God is here obviously talking _to someone) whom he addresses as "us"
You also get a much more literal reading of the first commandment, of
course.
For a polytheistic reading fo Genesis try David Penchansky's "Twilight
of the Gods", fopr an interpretation that emphasises earlier
monotheism than most, A Reassessment of Biblical Elohim, by Joel S.
Burnett.
Cubist
> I'm in agreement that some religious folks are ignorant of science.
> Probably true that a lot of non-religious are the same way.
> However, it seems unnecessary to assume that if someone has a
> religious view that conflicts with the scientific consensus on the
> nature of history, and wants to defend an alternative interpretation
> of scientific data, that such a person is being ignorant.
ignorant. But that such a person *is* either a liar or an ignoramus,
is *not* an assumption; rather, it's a conclusion drawn from the
available data.
Case in point: Anybody who argues that evolution violates the
Second Law of Thermodynamics, is *either* (a) ignorant of at least one
field of science (thermodynamics, or biology, or both), or else (b) a
fucking liar. Because evolution *doesn't* violate the Second Law of
Thermodynamics, and that's all there is to it. It really is that cut-
and-dried.
> I just
> want to see what happens if I start from a 6-day creation, 6,000 year-
> old universe perspective and then look at the data from that
> perspective.
If you actually do that, you'll conclude that God went *way* the
heck out of His way to make the Earth *appear* to be 4.5 gigayears
old.
> >> If you prefer dogma that can't be verified and that is not
> >> amenable to scientific scrutiny, there's nit much we can talk about.
>
> That's an interesting one. I think that any assertion about the age
> of the universe (or just the earth) is a kind of dogma that can't be
> verified, but that nonetheless is amenable to scientific scrutiny.
Is it possible to learn about past events by studying the traces
those events left on whatever matter may have been in the vicinity at
the time?
> I think it's possible that
> evolutionary scientists may one day find some piece of data that just
> can't be reconciled with an old-universe perspective. Don't you?
In principle, sure that's possible. In practice, waiting for 'some
piece of data that just can't be reconciled with an old-universe
perspective' is rather like waiting for 'some piece of data that just
can't be reconciled with an Idaho-is-west-of-Montana perspective'.
Yes, there are all those maps which depict Idaho as lying to the west
of Montana, but all those maps were made by fallible humans, weren't
they? And sure, there are people who have traveled west from Montana
and entered Idaho -- but again, they are fallible humans, and they
could all be wrong!
> >> The upshot is, *both* Genesis 1 *and* Genesis 2 *cannot* be literal, historical Truth, because by a literal,
> >> historical reading, *those two chapters of Genesis CONTRADICT EACH OTHER*.
> >> This is a bit of a problem for literal interpretation of Genesis,
> not so?
> I think it's an interesting puzzle, but I can only assume that
> theologians have long ago found a satisfying explanation. If I was
> researching horse fossils, maybe that would be something I would have
> to explore, but until then, this isn't enough to make me throw out the
> whole creation narrative.
[John Cleese voice] The fossils don't enter into it, my good man! [/
John Cleese voice] It's *solely and entirely* a question of Biblical
interpretation: *If* Genesis is a news report, *then* Genesis 1
DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS Genesis 2, end of discussion. But if, on the
other hand, Genesis is *not* a news report, it simply doesn't matter
whether or not any of the specific details of Genesis 1 disagree with
any of the specific details of Genesis 2. So theologians already have
come up with a 'satisfying explanation', namely, that Genesis ain't a
news report.
> >> Perhaps God is smart enough to use metaphors, or even speak in
> >> parables which convey Truth even tho they aren't news reports. Or
> >> perhaps not; you'll have to make that call yourself.
>
> Agreed - and it's certainly true that the Bible uses metaphor and
> parables to convey its principles. But that, on its own, doesn't give
> me license to assume that the Genesis account is metaphorical.
Why not?
> >> The literalist view forces you to choose and the choice often taken is that
> >> the Bible is authoritative on all things including science and thus any
> >> science that contradicts it must be false. You then spend your life running
> >> and hiding from the logical inconsistencies in the Book and between this
> >> view and observable reality. It must be deeply troubling to have censor so
> >> many observations and twist and turn to avoid yawning logical traps.
>
> Are you really asserting that evolution has no
> yawning logical traps?
Yes, he is. Because as far as we know, evolution *doesn't* have any
yawning logical traps.
> >> Most creationists resolve this by creating God in their image: if
> >> they cannot image how God could use evolution to create mankind, then
> >> God must not have been able to figure this out either and thus had to
> >> resort to miracles. As theologies go, I think you can do better.
>
> Interesting - I'm actually exploring the opposite problem. I think
> that a lot of creationists are *too* imaginative - looking for
> complicated ways of making the Bible describe a billions-of-years-old
> creation and compensate for scientific data about evolution and
> cosmology, instead of poking at the data to see if the data can be
> described in a way that matches what I'm calling a plain reading of
> Genesis.
Doesn't that tell you something?
Seriously: If the people who believe in a young Earth have to come
up with ever-more-convoluted rationalizations to square their non-
negotiable belief with the scientific data, doesn't that suggest that
the non-negotiable belief in question might just be *wrong*?
> >> And, as a Christian you would be expected to place more weight on what
> >> you are supposed to believe are the works of God (the world) than on the
> >> words of men (the Bible, and in particular interpretations of the
> >> Bible).
>
> Would be expected by whom? And don't forget, I'm operating under the
> working axiom that the Bible is divinely inspired - that is, it was
> written down by men, but accurately represents exactly what God
> intended his created beings to know.
And yet, there's tens of thousands of different Christian sects. If
the Bible does indeed 'accurately represent' what God wants, it's
rather a pity He didn't make His wishes known more clearly...
> >> Merely rethinking won't do.
> >> Only giving up thought altogether will work.
> Oh, come now. There's no room for rational thought for someone
> operating from a young-earth creationist point of view when evaluating
> the results of scientific experimentation?
I suggest you read up on the Deluge Geology Society, and then ask
yourself that question.
> Part of my exploration is to see where the frontiers of that
> thought-space lie - at what point(s) do I have to say, "There's no
> logical reason for that outside of naturalistic evolution" or else say
> "Well, God must have wanted it that way". In the interest of full
> disclosure, I'll admit that my bias naturally leans toward the second
> option in those situations.
> Can I stand on the inerrancy of
> the Bible and confidently state that all the data around me can be
> interpreted in that context?
Yes, of course you can -- but only because *absolutely anything
whatsoever* can be interpreted in the context of Biblical inerrancy,
as long as you're willing to accept "Well, God must have wanted it
that way", and you've already stated that you *are* willing to accept
"Well, God must have wanted it that way".
> And if not, where's the limitations of that perspective?
A perspective that accepts "Well, God must have wanted it that way"
has the limitation that it provides *no grounds whatsoever* by which
one might distinguish truth from falsehood. In *any* case where
someone who *doesn't* accept "Well, God must have wanted it that way"
would say that X is false, a person who *does* accept "Well, God must
have wanted it that way" will *always* be able to regard X as true, on
the basis that "Well, God must have wanted it that way".
> The problem, to me, is taking fallible mankind's data as the starting
> point, and asking what's wrong with a perfect and holy creator God. A
> hardened YEC would probably turn that around the other way, wondering
> why we even entertain the idea that the universe is billions of years
> old when the Bible plainly says it's only 6000 years?
You're ignoring the fact that the Bible *doesn't* plainly say it's
only 6,000 years. Go ahead; search the text as long as you please, and
you will not find, anywhere in the Bible, a plain statement of when
the Earth was created. More, you will not find *any* plain statement
of the time of occurrance of *any* of the events described in the
Bible. The 6Kyear thing comes from Ussher's 17th-Century book ANNALS
OF THE EARTH, not the Bible. So if you want to doubt the validity of
science because it's the product of fallible humans, fine -- but in
that case, you really need to *also* doubt the validity of the
putative 6Kyear age of Earth, because *that, too*, is the product of a
fallible human!
TomS
<b23342f6-7b72-4abe...@o10g2000prn.googlegroups.com>, Cubist
stated..."[...snip...]
>> The problem, to me, is taking fallible mankind's data as the starting
>> point, and asking what's wrong with a perfect and holy creator God. A
>> hardened YEC would probably turn that around the other way, wondering
>> why we even entertain the idea that the universe is billions of years
>> old when the Bible plainly says it's only 6000 years?
> You're ignoring the fact that the Bible *doesn't* plainly say it's
>only 6,000 years. Go ahead; search the text as long as you please, and
>you will not find, anywhere in the Bible, a plain statement of when
>the Earth was created. More, you will not find *any* plain statement
>of the time of occurrance of *any* of the events described in the
>Bible. The 6Kyear thing comes from Ussher's 17th-Century book ANNALS
>OF THE EARTH, not the Bible. So if you want to doubt the validity of
>science because it's the product of fallible humans, fine -- but in
>that case, you really need to *also* doubt the validity of the
>putative 6Kyear age of Earth, because *that, too*, is the product of a
>fallible human!
>
As an example of what the Bible does plainly says, geocentrism serves
much better than YEC.
While over the ages, before modern science, there were various
interpretations of the "days" of Genesis 1, there was no disagreement
with the geocentric interpretation of the Bible.
Yes, I know that everybody but the 20th century YECs could have been
mistaken about how to read the Bible. But it is difficult to argue
that they all missed the obvious.
--
---Tom S.
"... the heavy people know some magic that can make things move and even fly,
but they're not very bright, because they can't survive without their magic
contrivances"
Xixo, in "The Gods Must Be Crazy II"
Mike Hammond
> In message
> <8d5aa74f-7c1f-4c0f-949a-455c8940f...@h9g2000yqk.googlegroups.com>, Mike
> Hammond <mctm...@gmail.com> writes
>
> >>> If you don't think there's only one creation story, tell me, please: Which did God create first, humans or horses?
> > <snip>
> >>> The upshot is, *both* Genesis 1 *and* Genesis 2 *cannot* be literal, historical Truth, because by a literal,
> >>> historical reading, *those two chapters of Genesis CONTRADICT EACH OTHER*.
> > >> This is a bit of a problem for literal interpretation of Genesis,
> >not so?
>
> >I think it's an interesting puzzle, but I can only assume that
> >theologians have long ago found a satisfying explanation.
>
> What you are overlooking is that the satisfying explanation is that the
> creation stories are allegorical, not literal history.
I'm not overlooking it, I'm purposefully starting from a different
perspective
>
> > If I was researching horse fossils, maybe that would be something I
> >would have to explore, but until then, this isn't enough to make me
> >throw out the whole creation narrative.
>
> But an unsubstantiated (not to mention contraindicated by internal
> evidence) hypothesis that Genesis 1 and 2 is literal history is enough
> to make you throw out 50% of science?
> --
Wow. Slow down there. I have no intention of throwing out any
science (unless it's data based on faulty methodology)
> alias Ernest Major
Epi Nephron
> Okay - I'm going to try to address each of the substantive points in
> your - sheesh - 50 responses to my post.
I'm only going to hit one of yours, as I dont't want to overwhelm.
> That's an interesting one. I think that any assertion about the age
> of the universe (or just the earth) is a kind of dogma that can't be
> verified, but that nonetheless is amenable to scientific scrutiny. I
> mean, the universe doesn't have a "born-on" date stamped into it
> anywhere. There's no digital picture of the big bang. Similarly,
> there's no digital photo of God creating the universe.
I would argue against this point. We can see deep into the past,
thanks to astronomy, and we've got great models of what would have
happened following a horrendous space kablooie. A famous test of this
was the measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Structure that
the COBE satellite produced. It's a great example of what science can
do. The measurements that the COBE satellite provided matched the
predicted values. We essentially have a digital photo of the past,
since the light of events from long ago is just now reaching us.
The fact that we can make measurements, come up with testable
hypotheses, test them, and see that our models fit the data is pretty
amazing. The evidence is that the universe is very large and has been
around for a very long time. If everything was created 6,000 years
ago (and you believe the data about the distance to stars, the speed
of light, etc.) it would necessitate the creation of light in transit
from distant stars, the creation of microwave background (the
signature of which is also created in transit), all of this supporting
the empirical view that the universe is ancient.
Either a) the data is false, or b) any creator is attempting to
decieve by creating the appearance of a very old universe, with all
the signs of a a universe billions of years old.
Ernest Major
<53f0e4bd-1463-4a08...@d19g2000prh.googlegroups.com>,
Mike Hammond <mct...@gmail.com> writes
>On Jun 7, 2:57 am, Ernest Major <{$t...@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> In message
>> <8d5aa74f-7c1f-4c0f-949a-455c8940f...@h9g2000yqk.googlegroups.com>, Mike
>> Hammond <mctm...@gmail.com> writes
>>
>> >>> If you don't think there's only one creation story, tell me,
>> >>>please: Which did God create first, humans or horses?
>> > <snip>
>> >>> The upshot is, *both* Genesis 1 *and* Genesis 2 *cannot* be
>> >>>literal, historical Truth, because by a literal,
>> >>> historical reading, *those two chapters of Genesis CONTRADICT
>> >>>EACH OTHER*.
>> > >> This is a bit of a problem for literal interpretation of Genesis,
>> >not so?
>>
>> >I think it's an interesting puzzle, but I can only assume that
>> >theologians have long ago found a satisfying explanation.
>>
>> What you are overlooking is that the satisfying explanation is that the
>> creation stories are allegorical, not literal history.
>
>I'm not overlooking it, I'm purposefully starting from a different
>perspective
In which case your willingness to assume that theologians have a
satisfying explanation which explains two contradictory accounts (both
of which are supposedly literal history) is unwarranted.
>
>>
>> > If I was researching horse fossils, maybe that would be something I
>> >would have to explore, but until then, this isn't enough to make me
>> >throw out the whole creation narrative.
>>
>> But an unsubstantiated (not to mention contraindicated by internal
>> evidence) hypothesis that Genesis 1 and 2 is literal history is enough
>> to make you throw out 50% of science?
>> --
>
>Wow. Slow down there. I have no intention of throwing out any
>science (unless it's data based on faulty methodology)
Regardless of your intent, you appear to have already done it.
Unless you have a particularly unusual interpretation your acceptance of
the creation story as literal history, with creation in 6 days, in a
particular order, indicates a YEC position - that is an earth of the
order of 10,000 (traditionally 6,000) years old. By adopting such a
position you've thrown out much of geology, physics and biology.
--
alias Ernest Major
TomS
<d06aae29-9451-4936...@v37g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>, Epi Nephron
stated..."
>
>On Jun 7, 2:21 am, Mike Hammond <mctm...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Okay - I'm going to try to address each of the substantive points in
>> your - sheesh - 50 responses to my post.
>
>I'm only going to hit one of yours, as I dont't want to overwhelm.
>
>> That's an interesting one. I think that any assertion about the age
>> of the universe (or just the earth) is a kind of dogma that can't be
>> verified, but that nonetheless is amenable to scientific scrutiny. I
>> mean, the universe doesn't have a "born-on" date stamped into it
>> anywhere. There's no digital picture of the big bang. Similarly,
>> there's no digital photo of God creating the universe.
What would it look like if we had a photo of God creating something?
How about God creating a human? Do you believe that humans are
creatures of God? Do you have a photo of God creating a human?
What is the difference between something which God created and
something which God did not create? What are we to look for in a
photograph which shows that difference?
>
>I would argue against this point. We can see deep into the past,
>thanks to astronomy, and we've got great models of what would have
>happened following a horrendous space kablooie. A famous test of this
>was the measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Structure that
>the COBE satellite produced. It's a great example of what science can
>do. The measurements that the COBE satellite provided matched the
>predicted values. We essentially have a digital photo of the past,
>since the light of events from long ago is just now reaching us.
Precisely.
>
>The fact that we can make measurements, come up with testable
>hypotheses, test them, and see that our models fit the data is pretty
>amazing. The evidence is that the universe is very large and has been
>around for a very long time. If everything was created 6,000 years
>ago (and you believe the data about the distance to stars, the speed
>of light, etc.) it would necessitate the creation of light in transit
>from distant stars, the creation of microwave background (the
>signature of which is also created in transit), all of this supporting
>the empirical view that the universe is ancient.
>
>Either a) the data is false, or b) any creator is attempting to
>decieve by creating the appearance of a very old universe, with all
>the signs of a a universe billions of years old.
>
Let's borrow the argument from design. The evidence for the universe
being at least many millions of years old is very complex. All of
that evidence couldn't have happened just by accident. So either the
evidence came about by natural regularities, and the universe really is
very old - or things were purposefully designed to give that
appearance.
TomS
<d06aae29-9451-4936...@v37g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>, Epi Nephron
stated..."
>
>> Okay - I'm going to try to address each of the substantive points in
>> your - sheesh - 50 responses to my post.
>
>I'm only going to hit one of yours, as I dont't want to overwhelm.
>
>> That's an interesting one. I think that any assertion about the age
>> of the universe (or just the earth) is a kind of dogma that can't be
>> verified, but that nonetheless is amenable to scientific scrutiny. I
>> mean, the universe doesn't have a "born-on" date stamped into it
>> anywhere. There's no digital picture of the big bang. Similarly,
>> there's no digital photo of God creating the universe.
What would it look like if we had a photo of God creating something?
How about God creating a human? Do you believe that humans are
creatures of God? Do you have a photo of God creating a human?
What is the difference between something which God created and
something which God did not create? What are we to look for in a
photograph which shows that difference?
>
>I would argue against this point. We can see deep into the past,
>thanks to astronomy, and we've got great models of what would have
>happened following a horrendous space kablooie. A famous test of this
>was the measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Structure that
>the COBE satellite produced. It's a great example of what science can
>do. The measurements that the COBE satellite provided matched the
>predicted values. We essentially have a digital photo of the past,
>since the light of events from long ago is just now reaching us.
Precisely.
>
>The fact that we can make measurements, come up with testable
>hypotheses, test them, and see that our models fit the data is pretty
>amazing. The evidence is that the universe is very large and has been
>around for a very long time. If everything was created 6,000 years
>ago (and you believe the data about the distance to stars, the speed
>of light, etc.) it would necessitate the creation of light in transit
>from distant stars, the creation of microwave background (the
>signature of which is also created in transit), all of this supporting
>the empirical view that the universe is ancient.
>
>Either a) the data is false, or b) any creator is attempting to
>decieve by creating the appearance of a very old universe, with all
>the signs of a a universe billions of years old.
>
Let's borrow the argument from design. The evidence for the universe
Epi Nephron
> Unless you have a particularly unusual interpretation your acceptance of
> the creation story as literal history, with creation in 6 days, in a
> particular order, indicates a YEC position - that is an earth of the
> order of 10,000 (traditionally 6,000) years old. By adopting such a
> position you've thrown out much of geology, physics and biology.
I think that's what MH is wondering, though. Rather than starting
with the scientific interpretation, and working from there, he wants
to start with literalism, and see what problems arise. Perhaps it's
like a proof by contradiction - make an assumption (young earth) and
show that there exist contradictions.
I completely agree that you have to pitch pretty much all astronomy
and geology, and much of biology - but I think that MH may not be
getting that point, and that we would have to give him specific
examples of physics/geology/biology that needs to be binned if YEC is
true. Ignoring the contradictions in the Bible (I know, why would
we?) and ignoring the fact that literalists select which parts to be
literal about (my favourite example is Jesus declaring in John 10:9
that he is the door, those who enter through him will be saved, and
shall go in and out and find pasture which is clearly metaphorical, as
I doubt that he meant that you could literally step in and out through
him into a grassy area.), I thik MH wants to start with the assumption
that one of the accounts in Genesis is true, and use the 6,000 year
old earth arrived at by tallying begats, and see where there is
conflict with science.
Correct me if I'm wrong, MH
Arkalen
Okay. So to begin, what parts of science are you willing to take as
valid provisionally ? Do you agree that the Doppler effect gives
indications as to an object's relative speed ?
Do you think that counting tree rings is a valid way to measure the age
of a tree ? How about when the tree is dead but there are live ones of
the same species (or even its clones, for trees that reproduce
vegetatively) at the same place, do you agree that by matching the
pattern of the rings of the dead tree with those of the live trees you
can also find the age of the dead tree ?
Do you agree with how science says radioactive decay works ?
Do you agree with stratigraphy, i.e. in rocks, the higher layers will
generally be younger ?
How do you think fossils are made ?
What do you think of lake varves ?
Do you agree with the parallax method of measuring the distance of stars ?
How fast do you think light goes ?
>> alias Ernest Major
>
>
Mike Hammond
> aren't lacking. Do you know about the Talk Origins website ? It has
> links to many creationist sites and once you've read those if you're
> curious you can find rebuttals in the various FAQs.
>
Maybe I wasn't clear. Where do I look to start exploring the data
that is used to support the evolutionist worldview? What are the
canonical half-a-dozen research reports that I would learn about in an
Intro to Naturalistic Evolution class?
>
> But I'm afraid the reason most people aren't Young-Earth Creationists is
> that the data *can't* be interpreted to show a 6000 year-old Earth. Not
> in good faith, not when you are aware of the data. But you can look and
> decide for yourself.
>
> One thing though : instead of looking at how the presuppositions of
> individual people color their interpretation of the data, consider the
> evolution of the scientific understanding itself. People didn't always
> think the Earth was old, let alone 5 billion years old. Most of the
> scientists a few centuries ago were European, and thus Christian. They
> believed in God and their default assumption would be that the Bible was
> accurate. Geologists didn't start with the assumption the Earth was old
> and then interpreted the data that way. They started with the assumption
> that the Earth was young, or with no assumption at all. They changed
> their minds because the data pointed to an old Earth and couldn't be
> interpreted otherwise.
>
It's a logical narrative - but I have doubts about the idea that it
couldn't be interpreted otherwise. Is it often the case that
evolutionary scientists find data that can only be interpreted in a
way that confirms their presuppositions?
>
> snip
> >>> So called creation scientists insist that science actually supports their literal biblical views.
>
> > What's wrong with that?
>
> Just the bit where they're wrong. And the bit where they don't do actual
> science - most creationist "research" institutions explicitly say that
> the Bible trumps evidence. That's not science.
>
Are you saying their experimental methods are faulty, or their
reasoning from the data they produce? Both?
Consider that idea of "Bible trumps evidence". Do you think they
really mean to say that because the Bible is true, that the results of
repeatable experiments aren't actually producing the data they appear
to be producing? Or do they more likely mean that they will evaluate
the results of their experimental science in a way that lines up with
what they believe the Bible says?
You might argue that their reasoning from the Biblical account is
unscientific, but does that, on its own, invalidate any particular
data points that their experiments produce if they are carefully
designed?
Will do.
> snip
>
> >>> Fallible men wrote it and since the various parts were written it has been translated and edited
> >>> many times and the context of the words as written is not the modern
> >>> context, so how you can say that every word is literally God's intent by
> >>> reading the modern meanings of the English words is beyond reason. This is
> >>> clearly illustrated every time the literalists cannot agree on the literal
> >>> meaning.
>
> > An interesting topic for Talk.BibleAuthorship. My original post
> > claims that the text is inerrant in its original form - and again, I'm
> > just going on faith for that one, supported by corroborating personal
> > experience. Of course translation problems occur with any language.
> > Bible scholars are forever digging into the original language,
> > consulting the original manuscripts, to figure out what was going on
> > linguistically. But I'd argue that when literalists can't agree on
> > the intent of the Bible, that says more about fallible literalists,
> > and less about the Bible.
>
> Note that "the original manuscripts" don't really exist. We don't have
> "copy 0" of the Bible.
>
Of course they do. Even a cursory glimpse at Wikipedia lists New
Testament manuscripts that are dated as far back as the 2nd century,
and Old Testament as far back as 3rd century BC.
> >>> The literalist view forces you to choose and the choice often taken is that
> >>> the Bible is authoritative on all things including science and thus any
> >>> science that contradicts it must be false. You then spend your life running
> >>> and hiding from the logical inconsistencies in the Book and between this
> >>> view and observable reality. It must be deeply troubling to have censor so
> >>> many observations and twist and turn to avoid yawning logical traps.
>
> > Forces you to choose? Agree. Asserting the Bible is true and
> > scientific observation doesn't mean what evolutionists argue it
> > means? Sure, why not? We're trying to answer unfathomable questions
> > of the nature of everything by scratching in the dust of a dinky
> > little planet in the middle of nowhere, cosmologically speaking.
> > Shouldn't we give each other a little bit of grace over the "yawning
> > logical traps?" Are you really asserting that evolution has no
> > yawning logical traps?
>
> As far as I know it doesn't. There are many unknowns about what
> organisms and trait evolved how and when but those are unknowns, not
> logical inconsistencies. What logical traps do you see in the theory ?
>
Haven't exposed myself to the theory rigorously enough to complain
substantively. I'll shout if I spot one.
>
> In general a scientific theory with "yawning logical traps" is a
> scientific theory that's in big, big trouble. It's why physicists are
> ripping their hair out over how relativity and quantum physics don't
> work together.
>
That's kind of fun to watch, isn't it? String theory - no - quantum
gravity - no - Higg's boson! - wait... what about...
>
>
> snip
>
> >>> There is no real science worth spit that backs up YEC. Negative
> >>> arguments against some other position don't count for much if
> >>> anything. Anyone that solves real life problems knows that fact.
>
> > Well, here's the thing. I don't think that any YEC should have any
> > reason to doubt that "real science" is not fairly arriving at the data
> > it's producing. The amount of carbon-14 in a rock is the amount of
> > carbon-14 in a rock, and there's no Bible verse anyone can quote that
> > will say it isn't. But what's interesting is how we interpret that
> > number. If an experiment produces a data point, and it supports
> > creationism but not evolutionism, does that on its own not make it
> > "worth spit"?
>
> It absolutely does. That experiment would revolutionize biology. No such
> experiment has happened however.
>
>
> > What if that experiment supports both points of view?
> > Is science only "worth spit" if it supports the naturalistic point of
> > view?
>
> Science can't do anything but support the naturalistic point of view
> because it studies nature. If it can be observed, measured, experimented
> on, it's amenable to science. If it isn't it's not.
>
I'm on board with the latter statement, but not the first. You're
saying scientific endeavor necessarily supports a particular view of
origins? How do you back up that claim?
Mike Hammond
I have a different perspective. I'm taking the approach that the text
isn't troublesome at all, it's the interpretation of the existing body
of data that's troublesome. And I'll see how far that approach
carries me.
>
> And so, in a nutshell Mike, that seems to me to be the main point of
> the account. We do well to bear in mind to who the account was
> directed. It was directed to an ancient god fearing society one of
> whose most important 10 laws was a prohibition of work on the seventh
> day and a command to rest. And this is clearly the main point of this
> text. To explain to the ancients why they should rest on the seventh
> day.
>
Really? That the main point of Genesis is that God is proud of
himself and we should take a day off now and then? I'm nobody's
theologian, but - wow.
TomS
<b46fcf92-8397-4dbe...@z33g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>, Epi Nephron
stated..."
[...snip...]
>I completely agree that you have to pitch pretty much all astronomy
>and geology, and much of biology - but I think that MH may not be
>getting that point, and that we would have to give him specific
>examples of physics/geology/biology that needs to be binned if YEC is
>true. Ignoring the contradictions in the Bible (I know, why would
>we?) and ignoring the fact that literalists select which parts to be
>literal about (my favourite example is Jesus declaring in John 10:9
>that he is the door, those who enter through him will be saved, and
>shall go in and out and find pasture which is clearly metaphorical, as
>I doubt that he meant that you could literally step in and out through
>him into a grassy area.), I thik MH wants to start with the assumption
>that one of the accounts in Genesis is true, and use the 6,000 year
>old earth arrived at by tallying begats, and see where there is
>conflict with science.
>
>Correct me if I'm wrong, MH
>
One variety of Biblical literalism gets around the obvious metaphors
in the Bible by saying that they take all things literally *except*
those cases where the ordinary reader can see that it is a metaphor.
I prefer, therefore, to take the places in the Bible which have
regularly been taken as literal, up until recent times. And
geocentrism seems to be an excellent candidate. *Nobody* thought
that the passage about the Sun standing still for Joshua was
figurative, for a stretch of 2000 years (from 500 BC to AD 1500).
There is more in the Bible which unambiguously says that the Sun
goes around a fixed Earth than there is about the Earth being a few
thousand years old. Lots of people gave lots of interpretations of
the "days" of Genesis 1 being other than 24-hour days. One favorite
was that a day was a thousand years (going back as far as the Epistle
of Barnabas from the 1st or 2nd century). Augustine interpreted them
as not being temporal intervals.
And then there is the question about where in the Bible it says to
read the Bible literally. There are places where it at least
*appears* to be saying "don't read things literally", but I don't
know of anywhere where it says "read the Bible literally".
Mike Hammond
Let me be clear. I'm not saying I'm setting aside any scientific
evidence. Until convinced otherwise, I'm perfectly willing to accept
that scientists have performed experiments in good faith and have been
able to generate valid peer-reviewed data.
What I'm setting aside was my preconception that there was no problem
assuming a naturalistic interpretation of those scientists' data. I'm
now considering the possibility that there is a real problem with my
old-earth approaches to reconciling Genesis with scientific data, and
that I haven't given YEC a fair shake. So you could say I'm kicking
the tires on young-earth creationism.
Frank J
> > Well, good luck on that endeavor ! The sources for creation "science"
> > aren't lacking. Do you know about the Talk Origins website ? It has
> > links to many creationist sites and once you've read those if you're
> > curious you can find rebuttals in the various FAQs.
>
> Maybe I wasn't clear. Where do I look to start exploring the data
> that is used to support the evolutionist worldview? What are the
> canonical half-a-dozen research reports that I would learn about in an
> Intro to Naturalistic Evolution class?
The data do not support "the evolutionist worldview." In fact there is
no *the* "evolutionist worldview." Evangelical Christian Francis
Collins has a very different worldview than Richard Dawkins. And mine
differs from both. But all 3 of us, and ~99% of "evolutionists," think
it's morally wrong to cherry pick evidence, define terms to suit the
argument, bait-and-switch concepts (e.g evolution and abiogenesis) and
quote mine.
I will provide more comments later, including to your replies to my
first reply. For now, I gladly retract the suggestion that you might
be one of the usual "drive-bys."
(snip)
TomS
<244e0042-f753-4313...@r33g2000prh.googlegroups.com>, Mike
Hammond stated..."
[...snip...]
>Maybe I wasn't clear. Where do I look to start exploring the data
>that is used to support the evolutionist worldview? What are the
>canonical half-a-dozen research reports that I would learn about in an
>Intro to Naturalistic Evolution class?
There is no evolutionist worldview. Evolutionary biology is a science.
(There is no electricity worldview, either.)
Have you tried talkorigins.org or Wikipedia?
Mike Hammond
> Mike Hammond wrote:
> > Hi!
>
> [snip]
>
> > But, if it is true, (and a plain reading of the Bible makes it clear
> > that its author believes it is true), then that means I need to
> > rethink some of my concepts about the nature of the universe as I
> > perceive it.
>
> [snip]
>
> I have read many books by Erich von Däniken and a plain reading makes it
> clear that he believes it is all true.
> I have also read Adamski's flying saucers book. a plain reading makes it
> clear that he believes it is all true, including the aliens bases on the
> back side of the moon. Should I rethink ... ?
Only if you think these people are in a position to speak
authoritatively about the nature of all things. I don't. Do you?
The Bible makes claims of that nature about itself.
>
> No, I prefer to think, and use all available facts as input for my thoughts.
>
> Facts for the existence of God: none.
> Facts for the Flood: none.
> Facts for exodus from Egypt: none. (because that exodus is a metaphor for
> something quite different)
> Facts for Young Earth: none.
> Facts for very old Earth: plenty. (Ice ages, Norwegian Fjords, same process,
> live on Greenland today. continental drift, plate tectonics.
There's those pesky facts again. Facts are for math classes and test
tubes. That there was an ice age doesn't make the earth old, it makes
it icy. That Norway has fjords doesn't mean that the earth is old, it
makes it bumpy. Those things are testable in a lab. Everything
beyond that is inference. Maybe strong inference, maybe weak
inference - but inference nonetheless.
>
> Literalism has corrupted the message actually contained in the Bible. Short
> version: It is a matter of spirit and the soul of man, in this life, here
> and now. The afterlife people are dreaming of is an illusion; the afterlife
> is your life after you have realized the meaning of the message. That makes
> you free, your 'sins' are forgiven.
>
Whoa. *Now* is the afterlife? What came before this?
> The creation of monotheism created a problem by merging the two gods into
> one. The creator of the universe is an illusion; a creation of the ancient
> mind's desire to make sense out of his obervations. Therefore all the gods
> of the ancients; they didn't know what forces were ruling the world.
>
Yikes. Which two gods?
> Thunder and ligtning: Thor in his chariot with his hammer; rains, winds ...
>
> You need to read books, books, books. Brace yourself for years of study.
Maybe you're misunderstanding my intent. I'm not striving for a
comparitive religions degree here - I just want to take the literal
reading of Genesis, line it up with current scholarship, and see what
pops out at me.
Stuart
Anbody who signs their posts "JC" probably should not be taken
seriously.
Stuart
Ernest Major
<244e0042-f753-4313...@r33g2000prh.googlegroups.com>,
Mike Hammond <mct...@gmail.com> writes
>> Well, good luck on that endeavor ! The sources for creation "science"
>> aren't lacking. Do you know about the Talk Origins website ? It has
>> links to many creationist sites and once you've read those if you're
>> curious you can find rebuttals in the various FAQs.
>>
>
>Maybe I wasn't clear. Where do I look to start exploring the data
>that is used to support the evolutionist worldview? What are the
>canonical half-a-dozen research reports that I would learn about in an
>Intro to Naturalistic Evolution class?
Is there such a thing as an "Intro to Naturalistic Evolution" class?
Anyway, there seem to be several misconceptions packed into your
paragraph.
Firstly, a false dichotomy between biblical literalism and an
"evolutionist worldview" (whatever that is).
Secondly, the erroneous idea that it the theory of evolution alone that
is not in accordance with biblical literalism. (A young earth was a dead
position in science decades before Darwin published "The Origin of
Species"; Hutton published in 1795, Lyell in 1830.)
Thirdly, the naive idea that the evidence can be packaged into
half-a-dozen research reports.
For summaries of the evidence of evolution there are, inter alia,
Dawkins' "The Greatest Show on Earth", and Coyne's "Why Evolution is
True".
>
>>
>> But I'm afraid the reason most people aren't Young-Earth Creationists is
>> that the data *can't* be interpreted to show a 6000 year-old Earth. Not
>> in good faith, not when you are aware of the data. But you can look and
>> decide for yourself.
>>
>> One thing though : instead of looking at how the presuppositions of
>> individual people color their interpretation of the data, consider the
>> evolution of the scientific understanding itself. People didn't always
>> think the Earth was old, let alone 5 billion years old. Most of the
>> scientists a few centuries ago were European, and thus Christian. They
>> believed in God and their default assumption would be that the Bible was
>> accurate. Geologists didn't start with the assumption the Earth was old
>> and then interpreted the data that way. They started with the assumption
>> that the Earth was young, or with no assumption at all. They changed
>> their minds because the data pointed to an old Earth and couldn't be
>> interpreted otherwise.
>>
>
>It's a logical narrative - but I have doubts about the idea that it
>couldn't be interpreted otherwise.
That is tantamount to epistemological nihilism.
> Is it often the case that
>evolutionary scientists
You're repeating the false dichotomy. The Reverend Sedgwick, for
example, was hardly an evolutionary scientist; in fact he is
remembered, among other things, as an opponent of the theory.
An old earth was concluded long before Darwin published "The Origin of
Species".
>find data that can only be interpreted in a
>way that confirms their presuppositions?
If you want to challenge interpretations you have to offer alternative
interpretations, or at least show reason for questioning them.
>> >>>been translated and edited
>> >>> many times and the context of the words as written is not the modern
>> >>> context, so how you can say that every word is literally God's intent by
>> >>> reading the modern meanings of the English words is beyond
>> >>>reason. This is
>> >>> clearly illustrated every time the literalists cannot agree on
>> >>>literal
>> >>> meaning.
>>
>> > An interesting topic for Talk.BibleAuthorship. My original post
>> > claims that the text is inerrant in its original form - and again, I'm
>> > just going on faith for that one, supported by corroborating personal
>> > experience. Of course translation problems occur with any language.
>> > Bible scholars are forever digging into the original language,
>> > consulting the original manuscripts, to figure out what was going on
>> > linguistically. But I'd argue that when literalists can't agree on
>> > the intent of the Bible, that says more about fallible literalists,
>> > and less about the Bible.
>>
>> Note that "the original manuscripts" don't really exist. We don't have
>> "copy 0" of the Bible.
>>
>
>Of course they do. Even a cursory glimpse at Wikipedia lists New
>Testament manuscripts that are dated as far back as the 2nd century,
>and Old Testament as far back as 3rd century BC.
Did you miss off a negative? In the light of your 2nd sentence, your 1st
sentence would make more sense as "Of course they don't".
>
>> >>> The literalist view forces you to choose and the choice often
>> >>>taken is that
>> >>> the Bible is authoritative on all things including science and thus any
>> >>> science that contradicts it must be false. You then spend your
Scientifc endeavours necessarily support views of origins that are
consistent with the evidence.
--
alias Ernest Major
Mike Hammond
> >>> If you prefer dogma that can't be verified and that is not
> >>> amenable to scientific scrutiny, there's nit much we can talk about.
>
> > That's an interesting one. I think that any assertion about the age
> > of the universe (or just the earth) is a kind of dogma that can't be
> > verified, but that nonetheless is amenable to scientific scrutiny. I
> > mean, the universe doesn't have a "born-on" date stamped into it
> > anywhere. There's no digital picture of the big bang.
>
> You mean you can ignore all the evidence? Isn't that something like a mental
> harikiri?
>
Who's ignoring evidence? I'm saying scientific data can support
various kinds of theories for origins, but it can't "verify" any of
them. The age of the universe is unverifiable.
Stuart
What are those doubts based on? Anything objective?
Is it often the case that
> evolutionary scientists find data that can only be interpreted in a
> way that confirms their presuppositions?
>
>
What is an evolutionary scientist? Is there such a thing
as a quantum scientist? A Big Bang scientist?
Either you accept that science is a process that interrogates nature
to figure out how it works or you don't.
If you accept the above you can be a scientist. If you don't, you're
not
a scientist.
This is where you go off the rails and demonstrate a profound
ignorance
of how science works.
Stuart
Arkalen
>> Well, good luck on that endeavor ! The sources for creation "science"
>> aren't lacking. Do you know about the Talk Origins website ? It has
>> links to many creationist sites and once you've read those if you're
>> curious you can find rebuttals in the various FAQs.
>>
>
> Maybe I wasn't clear. Where do I look to start exploring the data
> that is used to support the evolutionist worldview? What are the
> canonical half-a-dozen research reports that I would learn about in an
> Intro to Naturalistic Evolution class?
Uh... yeah... no. If you want a half-dozen of something, it will be
synthetic documents that explain evolution and why it's true. You're
better off with a book for that, like The Origin of Species or something.
If you want the actual data that evolution is inferred from you're
basically looking at all of biology and geology.
That said, do you have an access to scientific journals ? The Talk
Origin FAQs have lots of citations so you can trace back the original
papers.
Let's try to narrow it down. What would you be interested in ? Phylogeny
? Genetic evidence ? Anatomical/morphological evidence ? Actual examples
of speciation ? Of adaptation ? Transitional fossils ? Genetic
algorithms and other computer-based illustrations ? Examples of current
research in evolution ?
Besides it seems to me you have three different issues : whether
evolution happened (which contradicts a "literal" Genesis), whether the
world was created in 6 days (which contradicts cosmology and biology),
and whether the world is 6000 years old (not actually in the Bible. I've
never double-checked Ussher, if I were you I wouldn't take that number
on faith as it were).
For the old Earth, IIRC Wikipedia has some good links on radiometric
dating, including some of the original papers (again if you can access
them...). It also contradicts everything geologists know about rocks
so... Maybe if you went back to the old uniformitarism vs catastrophism
debates... Or you could look up plate tectonics; there again Wikipedia
probably has links to the original papers.
For the 6-day creation we're looking at cosmology. How about the
original papers on the cosmological background radiation, or when Hubble
first discovered the redshift ?
>
>>
>> But I'm afraid the reason most people aren't Young-Earth Creationists is
>> that the data *can't* be interpreted to show a 6000 year-old Earth. Not
>> in good faith, not when you are aware of the data. But you can look and
>> decide for yourself.
>>
>> One thing though : instead of looking at how the presuppositions of
>> individual people color their interpretation of the data, consider the
>> evolution of the scientific understanding itself. People didn't always
>> think the Earth was old, let alone 5 billion years old. Most of the
>> scientists a few centuries ago were European, and thus Christian. They
>> believed in God and their default assumption would be that the Bible was
>> accurate. Geologists didn't start with the assumption the Earth was old
>> and then interpreted the data that way. They started with the assumption
>> that the Earth was young, or with no assumption at all. They changed
>> their minds because the data pointed to an old Earth and couldn't be
>> interpreted otherwise.
>>
>
> It's a logical narrative - but I have doubts about the idea that it
> couldn't be interpreted otherwise. Is it often the case that
> evolutionary scientists find data that can only be interpreted in a
> way that confirms their presuppositions?
I'm not sure what you mean. In my geologists example, the data DIDN'T
confirm their presuppositions. So they changed their minds.
That said, I'm certain an evolutionary scientist today could find plenty
of data that can be interpreted in different ways. But we don't need a
theory that explains some of the data and is contradicted by other data,
we need an interpretation that matches ALL the data. Evolution is the
only one we have.
>
>>
>> snip
>>>>> So called creation scientists insist that science actually supports their literal biblical views.
>>
>>> What's wrong with that?
>>
>> Just the bit where they're wrong. And the bit where they don't do actual
>> science - most creationist "research" institutions explicitly say that
>> the Bible trumps evidence. That's not science.
>>
>
> Are you saying their experimental methods are faulty, or their
> reasoning from the data they produce? Both?
Insofar as they have experimental methods, I can't recall if they do off
the top of my head, it doesn't really matter. They make their
"researchers" swear that whenever the evidence contradicts the Bible
they'll side with the Bible. Whether it means they'll doctor
contradictory evidence, or hide it, or misinterpret it, or set up their
experiments to avoid getting such data in the first place, it's clear
that contradictory evidence won't be getting a fair shake.
> Consider that idea of "Bible trumps evidence". Do you think they
> really mean to say that because the Bible is true, that the results of
> repeatable experiments aren't actually producing the data they appear
> to be producing? Or do they more likely mean that they will evaluate
> the results of their experimental science in a way that lines up with
> what they believe the Bible says?
Creationists don't do much experimental science as far as I know. I
think nowadays they don't do any, given ID is the big thing and they
justify it with maths.
So I can't help you much there, but if you find an example of
creationists doing experiments I'll be glad to look into it.
>
> You might argue that their reasoning from the Biblical account is
> unscientific, but does that, on its own, invalidate any particular
> data points that their experiments produce if they are carefully
> designed?
No, a well-designed experiment should give decent results regardless of
the presuppositions of the person doing it. The key word is
"well-designed". And, for creationists, "experiment".
The funny thing is that although the horses came up in a discussion of
Genesis, they happen to be an almost canonical example of evolution.
Almost as much as the eye. On two counts even, because on the one hand
the perfect progression from small, multi-toed forest leaf eaters to
big, one-toed grass eaters is an ubiquitous illustration of evolution,
and on the other hand the way this has been portrayed as a perfect
progression is itself an ubiquitous illustration of how we shouldn't
show a unique, directed process when evolution is really much messier
(hence the other depiction of the horse lineage as a branching tree).
>
>> snip
>>
>>>>> Fallible men wrote it and since the various parts were written it has been translated and edited
>>>>> many times and the context of the words as written is not the modern
>>>>> context, so how you can say that every word is literally God's intent by
>>>>> reading the modern meanings of the English words is beyond reason. This is
>>>>> clearly illustrated every time the literalists cannot agree on the literal
>>>>> meaning.
>>
>>> An interesting topic for Talk.BibleAuthorship. My original post
>>> claims that the text is inerrant in its original form - and again, I'm
>>> just going on faith for that one, supported by corroborating personal
>>> experience. Of course translation problems occur with any language.
>>> Bible scholars are forever digging into the original language,
>>> consulting the original manuscripts, to figure out what was going on
>>> linguistically. But I'd argue that when literalists can't agree on
>>> the intent of the Bible, that says more about fallible literalists,
>>> and less about the Bible.
>>
>> Note that "the original manuscripts" don't really exist. We don't have
>> "copy 0" of the Bible.
>>
>
> Of course they do. Even a cursory glimpse at Wikipedia lists New
> Testament manuscripts that are dated as far back as the 2nd century,
> and Old Testament as far back as 3rd century BC.
For a document that gives accounts of stuff that happened long before
then. I mean, for the New Testament alone Jesus supposedly died in the
first century. Did the first writings about him really only appear a
hundred years later ?
Even if those manuscripts happen to BE the first manuscripts, then it's
because they're writing down oral history that's much older.
>
>>>>> The literalist view forces you to choose and the choice often taken is that
>>>>> the Bible is authoritative on all things including science and thus any
>>>>> science that contradicts it must be false. You then spend your life running
>>>>> and hiding from the logical inconsistencies in the Book and between this
>>>>> view and observable reality. It must be deeply troubling to have censor so
>>>>> many observations and twist and turn to avoid yawning logical traps.
>>
>>> Forces you to choose? Agree. Asserting the Bible is true and
>>> scientific observation doesn't mean what evolutionists argue it
>>> means? Sure, why not? We're trying to answer unfathomable questions
>>> of the nature of everything by scratching in the dust of a dinky
>>> little planet in the middle of nowhere, cosmologically speaking.
>>> Shouldn't we give each other a little bit of grace over the "yawning
>>> logical traps?" Are you really asserting that evolution has no
>>> yawning logical traps?
>>
>> As far as I know it doesn't. There are many unknowns about what
>> organisms and trait evolved how and when but those are unknowns, not
>> logical inconsistencies. What logical traps do you see in the theory ?
>>
>
> Haven't exposed myself to the theory rigorously enough to complain
> substantively. I'll shout if I spot one.
Don't hesitate. If you're right you might win a Nobel ^^
I might not have phrased that as I intended. I didn't mean that science
necessarily supports a naturalistic point of view (I don't disagree with
the statement but it isn't what I was saying), I meant that science can
support nothing else. Basically either we say it supports a naturalistic
point of view, or we say it supports nothing because that's not
science's job.
It goes to what I said that you apparently snipped about the
supernatural and psychics. If there's a supernatural phenomenon that
science can study and support, it's no longer supernatural. Hence the
sentence "science supports the supernatural" will always be false. That
doesn't mean you can't believe in the supernatural, but science will
never support it. Most people who believe in the supernatural are okay
with this; a lot of them embrace it in fact.
To apply to your situation, science can absolutely support a young
Earth. Or a 6-day creation following Genesis. Or even the existence of
God, if God is studiable. If God isn't studiable yet manifests itself
science will come up with "beeep does not compute NaN". Ever read Lem's
"Solaris" ? Kind of like that I expect.
But science can only support those things if we consider them to be
naturalistic phenomena.
Stuart
By your defintion. Fortunately that is not the one sceince uses.
Otherwise
scientific progress would be netx to impossible.
We can falsify any theory of the Universe which requires an age less
than several billion years.
I ask you, should we release all felons convicted solely on the basis
of forensic evidence ?
After all there were no witnesses to their crimes.
You are plumbing the depths of epsitemical nihilism.
Stuart
Stuart
> > Well, good luck on that endeavor ! The sources for creation "science"
> > aren't lacking. Do you know about the Talk Origins website ? It has
> > links to many creationist sites and once you've read those if you're
> > curious you can find rebuttals in the various FAQs.
>
> Maybe I wasn't clear. Where do I look to start exploring the data
> that is used to support the evolutionist worldview? What are the
> canonical half-a-dozen research reports that I would learn about in an
> Intro to Naturalistic Evolution class?
>
I could suggest some books. I don't do science fast food style.
Stuart
Robert Camp
You seem to have enough natural curiosity, skepticism and ability to
reason that I've little doubt once you've become familiar with these
issues you'll conclude that prospective purchase is a lemon.
But the more important question to me is, why would you bother kicking
those tires in the first place? Before you get to the textbooks, the
reams of journal articles, the many decades of scholarship, wouldn't
it be wise to examine some of the fundamental assumptions this
endeavor embraces - e.g., that the concept of Biblical inerrancy is
even intellectually defensible, that it's rational to privilege
scripture over science as regards the natural world, that this is a
reasonable heuristic regardless of religious tome (and if not, why
yours is uniquely inspired), etc.?
If this is just an intellectual exercise, one in which you cannot
conceive of investing Faith and well-being, then I can see that it
might be a useful learning experience. But if you are seriously unsure
and are seeking authoritative guidance, what would possess you to
think that provisionally adopting a young-earth perspective might lead
to genuine understanding?
RLC
Dana Tweedy
> > Well, good luck on that endeavor ! The sources for creation "science"
> > aren't lacking. Do you know about the Talk Origins website ? It has
> > links to many creationist sites and once you've read those if you're
> > curious you can find rebuttals in the various FAQs.
> >
>
> Maybe I wasn't clear. Where do I look to start exploring the data
> that is used to support the evolutionist worldview? What are the
> canonical half-a-dozen research reports that I would learn about in an
> Intro to Naturalistic Evolution class?
There are several good textbooks on Evolution. I'd suggest Douglas J. Futuyma's "Evolutionary Biology"
http://www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Biology-Douglas-J-Futuyma/dp/0878931899
If you are looking for a more popular, and less technical treatment, try: Nick Lane's "Life Ascending"
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Ascending-Great-Inventions-Evolution/dp/0393065960
Or Richard Dawkins' "The Ancestors Tale"
The T.O. FAQ is a good place to start as well:
http://talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-mustread.html
Also, please be aware that ALL science is "naturalistic" in that it makes use of methodological naturalism as a necessary condition. There isn't any such thing as a "evolutionist worldview". Those who accept evolution simply accept a view that the evidence matters in scientific questions. One doesn't have to change one's "worldview" to accept science.
>
> >
> > But I'm afraid the reason most people aren't Young-Earth Creationists is
> > that the data *can't* be interpreted to show a 6000 year-old Earth. Not
> > in good faith, not when you are aware of the data. But you can look and
> > decide for yourself.
> >
> > One thing though : instead of looking at how the presuppositions of
> > individual people color their interpretation of the data, consider the
> > evolution of the scientific understanding itself. People didn't always
> > think the Earth was old, let alone 5 billion years old. Most of the
> > scientists a few centuries ago were European, and thus Christian. They
> > believed in God and their default assumption would be that the Bible was
> > accurate. Geologists didn't start with the assumption the Earth was old
> > and then interpreted the data that way. They started with the assumption
> > that the Earth was young, or with no assumption at all. They changed
> > their minds because the data pointed to an old Earth and couldn't be
> > interpreted otherwise.
> >
>
> It's a logical narrative - but I have doubts about the idea that it
> couldn't be interpreted otherwise. Is it often the case that
> evolutionary scientists find data that can only be interpreted in a
> way that confirms their presuppositions?
It's always a human failing that people tend to interpret things to confirm their own beliefs. However the process of science tends to reduce this tendency. The interpreting the evidence in a scientific manner has so far confirmed the finding that life evolves. That's why scientists overwhelmingly accept evolution, not because they are predisposed to accept evolution over any other explanation.
>
> >
> > snip
> > >>> So called creation scientists insist that science actually supports their literal biblical views.
> >
> > > What's wrong with that?
> >
> > Just the bit where they're wrong. And the bit where they don't do actual
> > science - most creationist "research" institutions explicitly say that
> > the Bible trumps evidence. That's not science.
> >
>
> Are you saying their experimental methods are faulty, or their
> reasoning from the data they produce? Both?
What I suspect he means is that creationists do not make use of the scientific method. They may mimic some of the trappings of science, but creationists are prevented from doing science by the preconceived belief that the Bible must be true.
In science, one must always allow the evidence to be the deciding factor in what idea is more likely correct. By placing the Bible as the deciding factor, creationists have abandoned science. It doesn't matter what one's "experimental method" may be, if you won't accept any evidence that contradicts one's beliefs.
Creationists often accuse mainstream scientists of the same thing, that their prior commitment to evolution prevents them from accepting evidence to the contrary. Evolution, however is not a mindset, or a worldview. It's a scientific theory, and must be supported by the evidence. If evidence were to be found that contradicts evolution, the theory would have to be either heavily modified, or discarded.
> Consider that idea of "Bible trumps evidence". Do you think they
> really mean to say that because the Bible is true, that the results of
> repeatable experiments aren't actually producing the data they appear
> to be producing?
Actually, yes, that's exactly what most "creation scientists" do. They will attack the evidence, attack the experiments, or simply ignore the findings.
> Or do they more likely mean that they will evaluate
> the results of their experimental science in a way that lines up with
> what they believe the Bible says?
That's the rub. In science, one changes one's theory to line up with the evidence, not "evaluate the results" to line up with one's beliefs.
>
> You might argue that their reasoning from the Biblical account is
> unscientific, but does that, on its own, invalidate any particular
> data points that their experiments produce if they are carefully
> designed?
If you can find any actual examples of creation scientists actually doing any experiments, or making any original research, you are welcome to present it. Again, the problem with most creationist "science" is that the results they will accept are already pre-determined. Nothing will change the interpretation they want to evidence to show.
snip
> > Note that "the original manuscripts" don't really exist. We don't have
> > "copy 0" of the Bible.
> >
>
> Of course they do. Even a cursory glimpse at Wikipedia lists New
> Testament manuscripts that are dated as far back as the 2nd century,
> and Old Testament as far back as 3rd century BC.
However they are still copies of copies.
SNIP
> > Science can't do anything but support the naturalistic point of view
> > because it studies nature. If it can be observed, measured, experimented
> > on, it's amenable to science. If it isn't it's not.
> >
>
> I'm on board with the latter statement, but not the first. You're
> saying scientific endeavor necessarily supports a particular view of
> origins? How do you back up that claim?
The methodological naturalism that science makes use of is not a "particular view of origins" but a necessary condition of science itself. Science doesn't rule out the possibility of the supernatural, but since there is no way to test the actions of a supernatural being, scientists make the conscious choice to exclude appeal to supernatural influences from science. Without this condition, science can't operate.
DJT
Ernest Major
<e299f3bd-d9bf-4bab...@k15g2000pri.googlegroups.com>,
Mike Hammond <mct...@gmail.com> writes
As mentioned earlier, accepting a YEC interpretation of the Bible,
entails throwing out 50% of science.
If you're going to retreat to radical skepticism (epistemological
nihilism) that's not much point in us discussing current scholarship.
For example, you dismiss the Norwegian fiords with the line "That Norway
has fjords doesn't mean that the earth is old, it makes it bumpy."
Fjords are formed by erosion by glaciers; it takes time for glaciers to
erode valleys thousands of feet deep. This means that we can use the
existence of the fjords to infer a minimum age (with pretty large error
bars) for the earth. Regardless of whether the error bars in this case
exclude a YEC position that your first reaction is to implicitly reject
glaciology isn't promising.
--
alias Ernest Major
TomS
<e299f3bd-d9bf-4bab...@k15g2000pri.googlegroups.com>, Mike
Hammond stated..."
[...snip...]
>Maybe you're misunderstanding my intent. I'm not striving for a
>comparitive religions degree here - I just want to take the literal
>reading of Genesis, line it up with current scholarship, and see what
>pops out at me.
>
If you want to read about current scholarship about the Bible, you
could try looking at some of the volumes under the title "Anchor
Bible".
Ernest Major
<{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk> writes
PS: The founder of glaciology was Louis Agassiz, the last significant
"creationist" scientist.
--
alias Ernest Major
gdgu...@gmail.com
> On Jun 7, 5:40 am, "Rolf" <rolf.aalb...@tele2.no> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Mike Hammond wrote:
> > > Hi!
>
> > [snip]
>
> > > But, if it is true, (and a plain reading of the Bible makes it clear
> > > that its author believes it is true), then that means I need to
> > > rethink some of my concepts about the nature of the universe as I
> > > perceive it.
>
> > [snip]
>
> > clear that he believes it is all true.
> <snip>
> > I have also read Adamski's flying saucers book. a plain reading makes it
> > clear that he believes it is all true, including the aliens bases on the
> > back side of the moon. Should I rethink ... ?
>
> Only if you think these people are in a position to speak
> authoritatively about the nature of all things. I don't. Do you?
> The Bible makes claims of that nature about itself.
>
>
>
> > No, I prefer to think, and use all available facts as input for my thoughts.
>
> > Facts for the existence of God: none.
> > Facts for the Flood: none.
> > Facts for exodus from Egypt: none. (because that exodus is a metaphor for
> > something quite different)
> > Facts for Young Earth: none.
> > Facts for very old Earth: plenty. (Ice ages, Norwegian Fjords, same process,
> > live on Greenland today. continental drift, plate tectonics.
>
> There's those pesky facts again. Facts are for math classes and test
> tubes. That there was an ice age doesn't make the earth old, it makes
> it icy. That Norway has fjords doesn't mean that the earth is old, it
> makes it bumpy. Those things are testable in a lab. Everything
> beyond that is inference. Maybe strong inference, maybe weak
> inference - but inference nonetheless.
Ah. If inference is to be understood as a perjorative, then maybe
science isn't for you.
We read arguments here that seem to be based on the idea that
scientists cook up a hypothesis based on a couple of observations.
"Earth bumpy, must be old". Why not pick something like that and see
just how deep the detail goes. You won't be able to, of course,
without devoting a substantial chunk of your life to the pursuit. But
maybe somewhere along the way you'll develop a better appreciation for
one of mankind's more useful tools: inference.
> Maybe you're misunderstanding my intent. I'm not striving for a
> comparitive religions degree here - I just want to take the literal
> reading of Genesis, line it up with current scholarship, and see what
> pops out at me.
What should pop out is that Genesis does not line up at all with
current scholarship, but rather reads like the work of the human
beings who wrote it. It isn't a close call, and it isn't just biology
that contradicts Genesis.
Mike Hammond
> > of the universe (or just the earth) is a kind of dogma that can't be
> > verified, but that nonetheless is amenable to scientific scrutiny. I
> > mean, the universe doesn't have a "born-on" date stamped into it
> > there's no digital photo of God creating the universe.
>
> eyewitness testimony, then yes it is unverified by that definition.
> But if
> thats your definition, you will find out that it leads to epistemical
> nihilism.
>
Okay - big vocabulary words there. Epistemical = relating to the
nature of knowledge. Nihilism = relating to nothingness
You're saying that the presumption that no historical event can be
objectively proven to have occurred leads to the conclusion that
nothing at all is knowable? I'm not sure I agree with that. I think
people of good faith can argue from the vantage point of their
presuppositions (and maybe even more honestly) if both parties can
accept that neither one can claim absolute control of truth.
What's the alternative? Letting truth be whatever the majority
decides it is on a given day? When the majority comes to believe
something new, is the old truth no longer true? Was the new believed
thing true all along, and we just didn't know it? If so, what right
does anyone have calling something true?
I think it's more intellectually honest to say that we may never know
the actual age of the universe, but that my interpretation of this
data suggests age X, and that your interpretation suggests Y.
>
> Should criminals convicted based solely on forensic evidence be
> released from prison? After all, nobody saw them commit their crimes.
> Likewise, should any of them be sprung on the basis of DNA evidence?
>
Yes and yes. Although we may never know exactly what happened at a
crime scene, members of a jury and judges are free to make rational
judgements based on their interpretation of evidence before them.
It's why juries are asked to determine culpability "beyond a
reasonable doubt" in civil cases and "by the preponderance of the
evidence" in civil cases. (Note that O.J. Simpson was found Not
Guilty by the first standard, but responsible for his wife's death by
the second, for example.) Two different standards for the level of
confidence in the data necessary to take a certain action. Judges
weigh (I presume) DNA data based upon some reasonable standard. If
it's 48% sure you didn't commit the crime - back to your cell. 97.2%
sure? Off you go.
>
>
> > >> So called creation scientists insist that science actually supports their literal biblical views.
>
> > What's wrong with that?
>
> They fail repeatedly to demonstrate that.
>
Fair enough. If their science isn't producing repeatable results,
they fail. If their data is legitimately produced, but the reasoning
doesn't pass agreed upon standards of logic, they fail. Not having
reviewed any of their results yet, I can't speak from personal
experience - which of those criteria (or other) would you say the
creation scientists are failing?
>
> Insistence isn't enough. You must present an unbroken chain of logic
> that goes from the evidence to support your interpretation. And you
> must consider all of the available evidence, and not omit evidence that makes you
> uncomfortable.
>
On the grand scale, I'm with you. But individual experiments aren't
done on the grand scale - they're done at the level of individual data
points from individual samples of matter accessible to scientists here
on Earth. And those data points are subject to interpretation. A
good-faith interpretation of that data, in my opinion, results either
in the conclusion that the data conforms to existing assumptions or
that it conflicts with existing assumptions.
>
>
> > Isn't it obvious that most scientists interpret evidence in a way that
> > confirms their views until they encounter data that absolutely can't
> > be reconciled with their views?
>
> So long as they are not omitting evidence that contradicts their
> theory. Harping
> on some evdience that supports one's view while at the same time
> ignoring evidence
> that doesn't is a good way to get a bad reputation.
>
Fair enough.
>
>
> > >> Unfortunately they can't produce any scientific evidence that supports their views. And neither can you.
>
> > I certainly can not - having no technical training in the relevant
> > fields. But perhaps they can.
>
> I've been posting here for over 15 years. It hasn't happened yet.
>
> And here's the big one - perhaps
>
> > evolutionary-minded scientists can. Scientific data is scientific
> > data - it doesn't have a view. I think it's possible that
> > evolutionary scientists may one day find some piece of data that just
> > can't be reconciled with an old-universe perspective. Don't you?
>
> Sure. Science is always provisional. Thats why it isn't dogma. Should
> we find a Pre-Cambrian
> rabbit we will need to alter our theories as to the history of life on
> Earth. By defintion
> a Scientrific theory must be falsifiable. However, there is a big
> difference between being
> falsifiable and falsified. By discarding theories no longer supported
> by evidence is how sceince
> makes progress in the sense that we have increased our understanding
> of how nature works and
> that we have been able to use that knowledge for the betterment of
> mankind.
>
> This is why in thousands of years Religion hasn't made progress.
> There's no objective way to
> determine whether or not a religion is wrong or right.
>
I'd argue that religions don't need to 'progress' in the same way that
science does. Religions make a set of truth claims, and invite those
who accept those claims to - well - to do whatever those truth claims
suggest that they do. Christianity claims that creation was once
perfect, but was corrupted by sin that was atoned for by the death,
burial and resurrection of Jesus to allow those who receive that
atonement to participate in the restored perfection that comes at the
end of all things.
Is there a way to determine that all that is Truth with a capital T?
No. But can we look at evidence around us and determine for ourselves
if that corroborates that set of truth claims? I don't see why not.
> Science has demondstrated the idea of an Earth 6000 years old or a
> Noachian deluge is false.
Neat. Which study would you say most clearly demonstrates that
assertion? Is there a research paper that I can review?
> The only recourse is to invoke *miracles* that then take such explanantions out
> of the realm of science.
>
> Stuart
Epi Nephron
> Who's ignoring evidence? I'm saying scientific data can support
> various kinds of theories for origins, but it can't "verify" any of
> them. The age of the universe is unverifiable.
We have plenty of evidence that the earth and universe are old, but if
you are willing to believe that they were made with the appearance of
age it makes it much harder.
Let's put it this way.
There is a wind-up clock, and you can see that it was at one point
fully wound (thanks to trace scratches, let's say, on the main spring,
that would only have occurred fully wound), and it is now quite run
down, and from all evidence it has been ticking at the same, known
rate, and testing of models of the clock shows that this rate matches
the theoetical model, and that the forces involved are unchanging.
From this we can deduce that the age of the clock is at least as old
as the amount of time it would take to have unwound to this point.
Is this too inductive for you? We have many such clocks, and they
often rely on different mechanisms (say, spring powered, weight
powered, water powered, etc.), each using their own models, and all
agreeing pretty accurately.
That's essentially the situation. There are lots of ways of measuring
the age of the earth and universe, and they all point to a very old
universe/earth. Multiple models that are tested would need to be not
just wrong, but spectacularly wrong. The only real counter argument
is that someone made all the clocks we can see look really old, to
purposely decceive us. And this person would have to have intended
it, as it would involve adjusting many different models to all point
at the same wrong answer.
So, if you can accept a deceptive god who sets things in motion to
seem old, you can be consistent.
Burkhard
> On Jun 7, 5:40 am, "Rolf" <rolf.aalb...@tele2.no> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Mike Hammond wrote:
> > > Hi!
>
> > [snip]
>
> > > But, if it is true, (and a plain reading of the Bible makes it clear
> > > that its author believes it is true), then that means I need to
> > > rethink some of my concepts about the nature of the universe as I
> > > perceive it.
>
> > [snip]
>
a very readable intro is Ancient Earth, Ancient Skies: The Age of
Earth and its Cosmic Surroundings, 2004
There is a longer, earlier book by him too, which is a bit more
technical.
A good historical overview of how we learned about the age of the
earth is Claude C. Jr. Albritton: The Abyss of Time: Changing
Conceptions of the Earth's Antiquity After the 16th Century- it covers
up to 1960
John Harshman
> Until recently, I've been an adherent of the 'old-earth' model that
> says that the biblical description of 6 days must be a metaphor for
> something else that fits better with scientific claims of multi-
> million-year-old fossils and multi-billion-year-old galaxies. Over
> the last year or so I've been increasingly persuaded by the idea that
> the plain meaning of the 6 Biblical days is just that - six literal 24-
> hour days.
>
> Naturally, the math and science nerd in me rebels against that idea.
> But, if it is true, (and a plain reading of the Bible makes it clear
> that its author believes it is true), then that means I need to
> rethink some of my concepts about the nature of the universe as I
> perceive it.
>
> So there you go. I'm wading into the deep end of the creationism/
> evolutionism swimming pool, looking to see if I can swim with the big
> kids.
Here's the problem, and it's one of basic epistemology. You can accept a
literally interpreted bible as the best source of knowledge or you can
accept science. Not both, because they contradict each other radically.
You can't force scientific data to fit the literal Genesis story (or,
rather, stories) without either ignoring the data or treating it
dishonestly (in which I include self-deception, which is common).
Take a simple example, the age of the universe. Since we can see objects
that are many billions of light-years away, it necessarily follows that
the universe is many billions of years old. Creationists get around this
by supposing a) light was created en route or b) the speed of light (or
nature of space) is different far away from us or was different in the
past. The first requires a deceptive god who gives us a record of events
that never happened -- supernovae in other galaxies, for example. The
second requires assumptions that are simply contradicted by all the data
we have and are supported by none.
I don't care which you pick, literal bible or science, but you have to
pick one. (Actually, I do care; I would prefer that you pick science,
because I would prefer that people whose votes may affect my life and
those of my relatives not be seriously deluded. But it's still your choice.)
Ernest Major
<9f6ae081-88f9-4277...@r33g2000prh.googlegroups.com>,
Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> writes
by G. Brent Dalrymple
>
>There is a longer, earlier book by him too, which is a bit more
>technical.
>
>A good historical overview of how we learned about the age of the
>earth is Claude C. Jr. Albritton: The Abyss of Time: Changing
>Conceptions of the Earth's Antiquity After the 16th Century- it covers
>up to 1960
>
--
alias Ernest Major
Ray Martinez
> On Monday, June 6, 2011 3:46:31 PM UTC-6, Ray Martinez wrote:
> > On Jun 5, 6:51 pm, Mike Hammond <mct...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hi!
>
> > > This is my first post on talk.origins. I've recently decided to
> > > become more involved in the creation/evolution debate, and this seems
> > > to be the place to converse with passionate individuals on both sides
> > > of this fascinating issue. Here's my background:
>
> > > I am a 37-year-old technology trainer in the Chicago area. My formal
> > > training is in computer science, not in theology, cosmology, biology,
> > > or any other field especially useful to this discussion. I have a
> > > fondness for math and science, but nothing that reaches beyond what
> > > would be covered in a first-year college survey class.
>
> > > I am a Christian of the non-denominational Protestant variety. I
> > > accept the principle of the inerrancy of the Holy Bible in its
> > > original form as a matter of faith, as well as the principle that the
> > > Bible represents the divinely inspired revelation of the one God of
> > > the universe.
>
> > > says that the biblical description of 6 days must be a metaphor for
> > > something else that fits better with scientific claims of multi-
> > > million-year-old fossils and multi-billion-year-old galaxies. Over
> > > the last year or so I've been increasingly persuaded by the idea that
> > > the plain meaning of the 6 Biblical days is just that - six literal 24-
> > > hour days.
>
> > > Naturally, the math and science nerd in me rebels against that idea.
> > > that its author believes it is true), then that means I need to
> > > rethink some of my concepts about the nature of the universe as I
> > > perceive it.
>
> > > evolutionism swimming pool, looking to see if I can swim with the big
> > > kids.
>
>
> > Hi Mike, hope you stick around.
>
> > You don't need to re-think any Pentateuchal or science concepts. A
> > scriptural Old Earth is based on Genesis 1:1 through Genesis 1:2. The
> > latter verse preserves a record of pre-Adamic regression. From verse 3
> > onward is a RE-creation account. This is why God told Adam to RE-
> > plenish the Earth (as opposed to plenish).
>
> Note that Ray is trying to establish a Biblical point by citing an English word, when the original text wasn't written in English. That should give you some idea of Ray's "scholarship".
>
> > The creation days (re-
> > creation of the biosphere) do not, in any way, indicate a young Earth,
> > but a young biosphere. Our present biosphere (post-Flood) is also
> > young.
>
> > A word about evolution and Atheism:
>
> Note too that Ray is making this up.
>
>
>
> > Since no God exists, Atheists have no choice but to believe that
> > species originate species (evolution).
>
> Actually, atheists have many choices as to what to believe. Evolution, however is the most well established scientific explanation for the evidence. That's why many Christians, as well as other religionists accept evolution as well.
>
> > This renders all of their
> > conclusions predetermined.
>
> Ray's assertion here is incorrect, and he's been shown why it's incorrect many times.
>
> > Beware:The Evolutionists at this website
> > (Talk.Origins) exist to deny this self-evident fact.
>
> "Self Evident" is Ray's way of making an assertion he knows is wrong and can't support.
>
> > They love
> > Christians who bow their knee to Darwin at the expense of God, His Son
> > and the Bible.
>
> Of course, accepting a scientific theory is not "bowing one's knee" to anyone. Accepting evolution doesn't cause God any "expense".
>
> > Richard Dawkins is famous for saying "Darwin made it
> > possible to be an intellectually fulfilled [A]theist."
>
> Richard Dawkins can say what he wants. That doesn't mean that one must be an atheist to accept the science of evolution.
>
> > This is why all
> > Atheists accept, defend and promote evolution.
>
> Ray already knows that not all atheists accept, defend, or promote evolution. He keeps repeating this statement, even though he knows it's false.
>
> > I urge you to consider
> > these facts.
>
> Note too that what Ray calls "facts" everyone else would call "unsupported and absurd opinions".
>
>
>
> > RM (Paleyan IDist-anti-evolutionist-Biblical Objectivist)
>
> Note too that Ray doesn't know anything about the positions he claims to represent, or oppose.
>
> DJT
>
> Fnord- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Classic example of what I was talking about Mike: here we have a
"Christian" (Dana Tweedy) bowing his knee to Baal (= Darwin) and his
pro-Atheist explanation of nature (= evolution). In more graphic terms
we can say our "Christian" is kissing the ass of Christ's enemies (=
Atheists).
Is this what you want?
Evolution is an EXPLANATION of evidence (and a false explanation).
Since no God exists, Atheists have no choice but to believe that
species originate species (evolution).
Real Christians see and accept the observation of design in nature. It
tells us that God Himself (invisible Designer) causes species to
exist. Genesis 1 is confirmed.
When a Christian accepts evolution he or she automatically becomes
Judas kissing Jesus while betraying Him to His enemies (in this case,
Atheists).
Ray (Biblical Objectivist-species immutabilist)
Ray Martinez
>
> >> You don't need to re-think any Pentateuchal or science concepts. A
> >> scriptural Old Earth is based on Genesis 1:1 through Genesis 1:2. The
> >> latter verse preserves a record of pre-Adamic regression. From verse 3
> >> onward is a RE-creation account. This is why God told Adam to RE-
> >> creation of the biosphere) do not, in any way, indicate a young Earth,
> >> but a young biosphere. Our present biosphere (post-Flood) is also
> >> young.
>
> idea - I'm going to try it the old-fashioned way and see how it goes.
> Young universe, young earth.
>
You have misunderstood: Not Old universe/Young Earth, but Old Earth/
Young biosphere.
> >> A word about evolution and Atheism:
> >> Since no God exists, Atheists have no choice but to believe that
> >> species originate species (evolution). This renders all of their
> >> conclusions predetermined. Beware:The Evolutionists at this website
> >> (Talk.Origins) exist to deny this self-evident fact. They love
> >> Christians who bow their knee to Darwin at the expense of God, His Son
> >> and the Bible. Richard Dawkins is famous for saying "Darwin made it
> >> possible to be an intellectually fulfilled [A]theist." This is why all
> >> Atheists accept, defend and promote evolution. I urge you to consider
> >> these facts.
>
> There's that troublesome word *fact* again. I'll take your opinions
> about the other visitors to this site under advisement - much obliged.
>
Actually what is troublesome is your inability to recognize facts
based on logic, Mike.
Slow down, read more carefully : )
Ray (anti-evolutionist)
Randy C
> of the universe (or just the earth) is a kind of dogma that can't be
> verified, but that nonetheless is amenable to scientific scrutiny. I
> mean, the universe doesn't have a "born-on" date stamped into it
> anywhere. There's no digital picture of the big bang. Similarly,
> there's no digital photo of God creating the universe.
But you don’t understand science if you think that you need to have an
eyewitness in order to know what happened in the past. Science
provides many tools for doing that. Crime scene investigators don’t
need to witness a murder in order to find evidence for who committed
it, right? Instead they have tools for seeing what, and even
approximately when, such events took place. Scientists can do similar
things, but obviously they use different tools.
In terms of the Age of the Universe a simple piece of evidence is the
speed-of-light. We can measure that. We can also measure (through
various mechanisms) how far away some things are. We see that the
furthest things from the Earth that we can see are more 13 billion
light years from Earth. So it took 13 billion years for that light to
reach us travelling at the speed-of-light. Therefore the universe
should be more than 13 billion years old.
Imagine, for example, that new stars appeared in the sky
periodically. Let's say that last night a star 6121 light years from
Earth suddenly appeared so that we could see it. Then a decade from
now, a star 6131 light years from Earth suddenly appeared in the sky.
If that was the case we would have compelling evidence that the
universe was about 6000 years old. In fact it would provide us with a
good mechanism for determining precisely how old the universe was. It
would be little different from determining how far a lightning bolt is
from us by measuring how long it takes the sound of the thunder to
reach us.
Are there other explanations for us able to see stars 13 billion light
years from us? Sure. But they all have serious flaws.
One possibility is that the speed-of-light was much higher in the
past. But that has numerous problems.
First of all, we don’t measure any differences in the speed of light.
It is so consistent that it is scientifically defined as a constant.
Historical measurements of larger values in the past can be completely
attributed to imprecise measurement systems.
Another problem comes from Einstein’s famous equation E = M * C**2.
As you probably know, ‘C’ is the speed of light. The amount of energy
coming from an atomic reaction where mass changes is proportional to
the SQUARE of the speed of light. So if the speed-of-light increases
by a factor of ten, then the energy released increases by a factor of
100.
This equation applies to more than atomic explosions. It also applies
to radioactive decay. The amount of energy released from each atom is
very small because the mass is so small. But within the crust of the
Earth there are a large number of such atomic reactions going on all
of the time. A very high speed-of-light in the past would have
caused severe issues within the Earth’s crust.
Another problem involves pulsars. Pulsars are rotating neutron stars,
many of which are far away from the Earth, that emit radiation at
very, very specific frequencies. The frequencies are in many cases as
precise as those that come from atomic clocks.
If the speed-of-light was different when the light first left the
star, then as we watched the star over a long period of time it would
appear to be speeding up.
In order to see this, let’s use some simple math. Imagine that there
is a pulsar that is emitting radiation at exactly one pulse per
second. When the speed-of-light was ten times what it is now when the
light left that star. Those pulses would appear to be ten seconds
apart as they reach us because the speed-of-light has slowed down to
what we have now.
Right?
At some point in the future when the speed of light is at the value we
measure in 2011,and the light from this star is reaching Earth, we
would measure it pulsing at one pulse per second. So the pulses from
this star would appear to us on Earth to have from one pulse every ten
seconds to one pulse per second. Even if that amount of change took
place over 6000 years, it would mean average frequency changes on the
order of milliseconds per year. Milliseconds are very easy to measure
with modern time measurement tools. So if the frequency changed by
that much over a year, we would notice.
According to Wikipedia, the first pulsar was discovered in 1967.
Something like 1800 additional pulsars have been discovered since
then. Surely ancient changes in the speed-of-light would have
provided observable changes in the frequency of the pulses on the
light waves from those stars and we don’t see such changes, we can be
confident that the speed-of-light has not changed.
Another possible explanation for why we see light from stars billions
of years from Earth when the universe is only a few thousand years old
is that the light was created “in place”. Light beams connecting all
stellar objects were created at the same moment as the stellar objects
were created.
There are problems with that hypothesis as well.
One problem with that hypothesis involves supernovas. A supernova is
an incredibly energetic stellar explosion. Supernovae are extremely
luminous and cause a burst of radiation that often briefly outshines
an entire galaxy, before fading from view over several weeks or
months. During this short interval a supernova can radiate as much
energy as the Sun is expected to emit over its entire life span. They
are so bright that we see them in other galaxies often more than 6000
light-years from Earth.
One such supernova is SN 1987A which is a supernova seen in 1987. It
was discovered on the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large
Magellanic Cloud, a nearby dwarf galaxy. Its source is approximately
168,000 light-years away from Earth.
So if light was “created in place” but that light records within it a
very dramatic but relatively short-lived event from a source far more
than 6000 light-years from Earth, then that event is a hoax. Why
would mythical events be recorded on light created “in place”? What
purpose would the “creator” of the light have to insert such events?
It would appear that the “creator” is deceptive.
There are many other reasons to believe the Earth and universe are
billions, rather than thousands, of years old. The only alternative
would seem to be a deceptive creator.
Arkalen
> On 07/06/11 16:27, Mike Hammond wrote:
>>> Well, good luck on that endeavor ! The sources for creation "science"
>>> aren't lacking. Do you know about the Talk Origins website ? It has
>>> links to many creationist sites and once you've read those if you're
>>> curious you can find rebuttals in the various FAQs.
>>>
>>
>> Maybe I wasn't clear. Where do I look to start exploring the data
>> that is used to support the evolutionist worldview? What are the
>> canonical half-a-dozen research reports that I would learn about in an
>> Intro to Naturalistic Evolution class?
>
> Uh... yeah... no. If you want a half-dozen of something, it will be
> synthetic documents that explain evolution and why it's true. You're
> better off with a book for that, like The Origin of Species or something.
> If you want the actual data that evolution is inferred from you're
> basically looking at all of biology and geology.
>
> That said, do you have an access to scientific journals ? The Talk
> Origin FAQs have lots of citations so you can trace back the original
> papers.
>
> Let's try to narrow it down. What would you be interested in ? Phylogeny
> ? Genetic evidence ? Anatomical/morphological evidence ? Actual examples
> of speciation ? Of adaptation ? Transitional fossils ? Genetic
> algorithms and other computer-based illustrations ? Examples of current
> research in evolution ?
Actually there is one piece of evidence that is easily observable (half
of it at least), was discovered long ago before Darwin ever came on the
scene, and is considered one of the most compelling pieces of evidence
for common descent (and evolution by extension) : the twin nested hiearchy.
But I'm a bit too lazy to write three pages about it so I refer you to
the ancients :
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/apr00.html
And some more phylogeny for more modern, post-2005 people :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r0zpk0lPFU
snip