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OmnipotentEntity wrote:
One of the things that we know about nature is that time is relative, my 7 days is not necessarily the same as your 7 days. If we assume that the time frame presented is accurate, would it be possible that the 7 days presented is time dilated in such a way to allow for a 13.7 billion year old universe from our frame of reference?
The Bible itself mentions this idea.
Psalms 90:4
"For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night."
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
I'm getting to that, first off, you didn't seem to have responded to my last point, do I take this to mean that you have conceded that the Bible does not preclude Evolution and a 13.7 Billion year time frame? If not, I would be interested to hear your reasoning with regard to my last post.
You have not convinced me about it. Another thing is, it said that He created all plants at one time, then all the fish and birds at once then all the land animals at once. And it specifically says that he created. Not something like he let them evolve.
Yet you still have not responded to my last point. You're changing the subject, and I won't let you do that.
I'll reiterate:
First, you held that the 7 days of creation is literal.
I stated that it's possible that creation took place in a literal 7 days from a different frame of reference. Because time is relative.
You countered this by saying that it couldn't happen that way. I asked for the basis of that assumption.
You replied with: "things are written how the writers think." In other words, God will put things in terms that the people of the time could understand.
I countered with: people would have a very difficult time grasping the concept of a 13.7 billion year old universe. Supposing if God inspired the writers the write that the sun and moon stopped moving, this is evidence that the writers of the Bible and people at that time could not grasp the concept of the Sun being very far away and very very large. How would they grasp something as old as a 13.7 billion year old universe when they did not even have a word for a number that high?
Please consider, and give a coherent explanation. I'm not asking you to speak authoritatively on behalf of God, of course. I'm merely asking for you to justify your interpretation of the Bible. But more importantly, justify your rejection of the alternate interpretation I'm presenting. An interpretation which enjoys wide acceptance from your peers, by the way. Why is the view that I'm presenting necessarily false?
The basis you presented is either flawed, or it simply lends credence to my interpretation. I don't see a third option, this seems to be a true dichotomy.
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Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
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OmnipotentEntity wrote:
An interpretation which enjoys wide acceptance from your peers, by the way.
Be that as it may, none of us were actually there.
Believing that God is all powerful, he can create the entire world with all the people and items in it as it is now in a moment.
Science is unable to differentiate between what actually happened, and what data we have access to and can measure tell us happened.
Taking the Bible as true is all fine and good, but I for one have no idea what the beginning actually means. Maybe it means 7 literal days as we know them. Maybe it means 7 stages, each being an undefined length of time which may or may not have been of equal amounts. We really have no way of proving what actually happened.
The better question is: Who cares?
Does it matter to us if the world was created 7 days ago, and all things we know, and all memories, and this website are all planted? Or if it was created 7000 years ago in 7 days, or it was created 7**7**7**7**7**7**7 millennium ago in the same time frame?
The Bible is not a history book, as the Bible skips the ~1500 years of the generations between Adam and Noah as barely anything more than a footnote.
The real question is, why create the world in 7 days (whatever that means), and at the state it was created in? What positive things do we learn from this?
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Nach, I'm not attempting to say "this is how things are." I'm simply trying to open sudgy up to the possibility that the universe is that old. He seems closed to the possibility because he believes that the Bible is in conflict with it, so I'm am attempting to show that the Bible is not necessarily in conflict with an old universe.
We have many other reasons to believe that the universe is old, and none save a possibly flawed interpretation of the Bible to believe that it is 6000 years old. But we're not at that stage yet.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
Joined: 3/9/2004
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Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
OmnipotentEntity wrote:
Nach, I'm not attempting to say "this is how things are." I'm simply trying to open sudgy up to the possibility that the universe is that old. He seems closed to the possibility because he believes that the Bible is in conflict with it, so I'm am attempting to show that the Bible is not necessarily in conflict with an old universe.
Understood.
OmnipotentEntity wrote:
We have many other reasons to believe that the universe is old
Not quite. We have many reasons to believe that the universe appears old.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Nach, I'm focusing on a single topic at the moment, so as not to confuse the situation. However, I will be more than happy to address your point once we get to that metaphorical bridge.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
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sudgy wrote:
There is a basis for the assumption that things are written how the writers think. Joshua 10:13 says "So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day." The thing is, the Earth actually stopped spinning, for that is what causes the sun and moon to rise and set. The writers didn't know this fact, however, so they said what they thought happened. God still inspired it. If it had said, "So the Earth stopped rotating" people in that time would have not gotten it. So yes, there is a basis in the assertion.
Where do you come off telling us that the world rotates as a fact and that the book of Joshua is wrong?
Maybe the entire universe spins around the earth in the opposite direction?
Edit: See the question here and the best answer.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
There is a basis for the assumption that things are written how the writers think. Joshua 10:13 says "So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day." The thing is, the Earth actually stopped spinning, for that is what causes the sun and moon to rise and set. The writers didn't know this fact, however, so they said what they thought happened. God still inspired it. If it had said, "So the Earth stopped rotating" people in that time would have not gotten it. So yes, there is a basis in the assertion.
Where do you come off telling us that the world rotates as a fact and that the book of Joshua is wrong?
Maybe the entire universe spins around the earth in the opposite direction?
Edit: See the question here and the best answer.
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Bobo the King wrote:
Nach wrote:
sudgy wrote:
There is a basis for the assumption that things are written how the writers think. Joshua 10:13 says "So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day." The thing is, the Earth actually stopped spinning, for that is what causes the sun and moon to rise and set. The writers didn't know this fact, however, so they said what they thought happened. God still inspired it. If it had said, "So the Earth stopped rotating" people in that time would have not gotten it. So yes, there is a basis in the assertion.
Where do you come off telling us that the world rotates as a fact and that the book of Joshua is wrong?
Maybe the entire universe spins around the earth in the opposite direction?
Edit: See the question here and the best answer.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
There is a basis for the assumption that things are written how the writers think. Joshua 10:13 says "So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day." The thing is, the Earth actually stopped spinning, for that is what causes the sun and moon to rise and set. The writers didn't know this fact, however, so they said what they thought happened. God still inspired it. If it had said, "So the Earth stopped rotating" people in that time would have not gotten it. So yes, there is a basis in the assertion.
Where do you come off telling us that the world rotates as a fact and that the book of Joshua is wrong?
Maybe the entire universe spins around the earth in the opposite direction?
Edit: See the question here and the best answer.
Yes... and you should know that if the entire universe is rotating around the Earth, distant stars would be moving very fast and their light would therefore be Doppler shifted by a certain amount which we don't observe. They also would undergo a massive acceleration, likely compressing them into neutron stars or black holes. Finally, you need to explain what force is holding these stars in.
Are you seriously advocating a geocentric view of the universe? You fail Occam's razor. You fail it forever.
Joined: 3/9/2004
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Bobo the King wrote:
Are you seriously advocating a geocentric view of the universe?
I advocate not jumping to any conclusions just because it is popular to do so. The mathematics show either method is a possibility, and quite frankly, I don't really care which is the absolute truth of the matter.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Are you seriously advocating a geocentric view of the universe?
I advocate not jumping to any conclusions just because it is popular to do so. The mathematics show either method is a possibility, and quite frankly, I don't really care which is the absolute truth of the matter.
I could not have constructed a more self-indicting phrase for you if I had tried.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Bobo the King wrote:
Nach wrote:
Bobo the King wrote:
Are you seriously advocating a geocentric view of the universe?
I advocate not jumping to any conclusions just because it is popular to do so. The mathematics show either method is a possibility, and quite frankly, I don't really care which is the absolute truth of the matter.
I could not have constructed a more self-indicting phrase for you if I had tried.
Are you saying that you do care, and that it actually matters to you?
See the 3rd paragraph here.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
How would they grasp something as old as a 13.7 billion year old universe when they did not even have a word for a number that high?
They did not need to have words for such high numbers. God could have said "many days," like in Genesis 21:34:
Genesis 21:34 wrote:
And Abraham sojourned in the Philistines' land many days.
Note that He did not. Instead, we have the definition of one day as "the evening and the morning" six times in Genesis 1 (verses 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31).
Are you seriously advocating a geocentric view of the universe?
I advocate not jumping to any conclusions just because it is popular to do so. The mathematics show either method is a possibility, and quite frankly, I don't really care which is the absolute truth of the matter.
I could not have constructed a more self-indicting phrase for you if I had tried.
Are you saying that you do care, and that it actually matters to you?
See the 3rd paragraph here.
As a physicist, I'd unhesitantly say hell yes, it does matter to me and I do care. I'd be a shitty physicist if I had responded with, "LOL, I guess evidence is inconclusive."
Link to video
Joined: 3/9/2004
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Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Bobo the King wrote:
Nach wrote:
Bobo the King wrote:
Nach wrote:
Bobo the King wrote:
Are you seriously advocating a geocentric view of the universe?
I advocate not jumping to any conclusions just because it is popular to do so. The mathematics show either method is a possibility, and quite frankly, I don't really care which is the absolute truth of the matter.
I could not have constructed a more self-indicting phrase for you if I had tried.
Are you saying that you do care, and that it actually matters to you?
See the 3rd paragraph here.
As a physicist, I'd unhesitantly say hell yes, it does matter to me and I do care. I'd be a shitty physicist if I had responded with, "LOL, I guess evidence is inconclusive."
Well in that case, your star problem can be countered with the distant stars also being contained within a synchronized rotational sphere, which would solve why you don't see light shifting.
Before you think such an idea is farfetched to imagine, I might add that ~700 years ago before anyone even heard of Galileo, someone wrote a "book of science" which proposed just that. In fact mentioning how the universe has 4 spheres one encasing the other, each of them rotating according to a set system.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Leela: So after I specifically asked you not to touch anything, you drank a bottle of strange blue liquid? It could have been poisonous acid!
Fry: It could have been. But chances were equally good it was an Emperor.
OmnipotentEntity: I was about to mention the fact that the Bible says that "there was evening, and there was morning" but realized that Dacicus already mentioned it.
Nach wrote:
Where do you come off telling us that the world rotates as a fact and that the book of Joshua is wrong?
Maybe the entire universe spins around the earth in the opposite direction?
First of all, I wasn't saying that the book of Joshua is wrong. I was just showing how the writers say how it looks, not how it is. And second of all, the entire universe might spin around the Earth.
Another thing to note about the problem with the wrong Doppler shift is that, first of all, the (other people's) estimated age of the universe is less than the length of the observable universe. But, not only is everything moving away from us, space itself is expanding (I heard this from wikipedia, so I'm not sure if this is how others explain it). I'm not sure if space expanding would change any Doppler shifts. The Doppler shifts are because things are moving away from us. Things in between might getting bigger may not change them. (This is speculative, this might not be the case at all, but it makes sense to me)
p4wn3r wrote:
I've seen a little of genetics and unfortunately this is not correct. It's extremely common that people confuse "genetic code" with the information stored in the genes. The genetic code is nothing more than the relation between three nucleotides and the aminoacids they instruct to produce in the translation process.
I've always heard genetic code another way, but I'll change what I said to fit what you said.
1. microevolution is when the DNA changes slightly through reproduction. It still has the same amount of chromosomes whenever this happens.
2. macroevolution is when the amount of chromosomes change. This only happens through mutation (probably reproductive mutation). This is necessary to turn into a different species, as different species have different numbers of chromosomes.
So galaxies formed in the last 6000 years then, in your opinion?
Yes. In the book Starlight and Time it shows how this could be the case.
And the hundreds of thousands of astrophysicists around the world, from different countries, cultures and religious backgrounds, are all in a huge world-wide conspiracy to keep quiet about this, and have all decided on the exact same lies, and have all agreed to not to publish research result indicating a young universe, and have successfully pulled off this stunt for over a hundred years.
Of course the other alternative is that that book is just pseudoscientific crap written with a specific biased agenda. But that would be ridiculous, wouldn't it? No, it must be a conspiracy. That's much more believable.
I find it amusing and sad at the same time (sad because, as the adage goes, "a mind is a terrible thing to waste") how you advocate scientific concepts of a finite universe that had a beginning, referencing all kinds of scientific discoveries, and at the same time advocate the view that scientists are just liars and/or don't know what they are talking about. You lack internal consistency in your world view.
Please start reading actual scientific books rather than some biased pseudoscientific crap. For your own good.
Warp wrote:
Ok, give me a repeatable and falsifiable controlled test...
I would say that the best case of this is miracles.
You haven't been reading anything I have been writing, have you? What exactly do you not understand in the concept that miracle claims, even if they were completely true and accurate, do not prove the existence of a god? That it's a deductive fallacy? Please tell me what you didn't understand, so I could explain it more clearly.
(And that's not even going into the fact that some random alleged "miracles" are far, far from being a repeatable controlled test.)
Also:
3. He got healed in a way that nobody could explain (except if it was a miracle).
Do you understand what "argument from ignorance" means? If not, then please tell me so I can explain it to you, and why it doesn't work.
Where exactly are you pulling this from?
I pulled it from Exploring Creation with Biology, p. 300-301.
Then please, please start reading actual scientific literature instead of pseudoscientific crap. For your own good.
Do you understand that you are highly biased in your reading? You will easily believe anything you read that supports your world-view, regardless of how credible it might be, while dismissing everything else that doesn't.
I was saying that mutations are what need to occur for different species to have a different amount of chromosomes. That must happen for a species to evolve into another.
You seem to be mindlessly repeating some factoids that you have either read somewhere or came up on your own. You don't even understand what you are saying. You are effectively saying above that every species has a different amount of chromosomes. I don't think you even know what a chromosome is. Do you understand that most species have about 30-60 chromosomes, and that there are literally millions of different species?
Also, you don't need mutations for new species to form. Just look up, for example, the so-called ring species.
I won't change my views because I feel like everything I know points to what I think.
So you are basically saying that feelings are more reliable than observation, measurement and testing. (Of course that's clear because all creationists think like that. It's just that I admire your unusual honesty about it.)
1. I am not wanting to change my mind because of my beliefs and how I interpret the evidence.
2. You are not wanting to change your mind because of your beliefs and how you interpret the evidence.
You see, that's another annoying creationist tactic: Try to make the position of the skeptic equal to the position of the believer. Skepticism is "just another belief system", exactly in par with any other belief system. This way the creationist justifies his position as being at least as equally valid as anybody else's (but most certainly better, in their minds at least).
A part of this is that you try to make it a question of how I personally "interpret evidence", as if it was just a question of personal preferences, choices and beliefs, and as if any interpretation would be as valid as anything else, that it's just as much a question of opinion as something abstract like "what is beauty?"
Nach wrote:
Believing that God is all powerful, he can create the entire world with all the people and items in it as it is now in a moment.
I don't think you understand the consequences of that idea. Basically it means that God is deliberately tricking us into disbelieving the creation story by making the world look like it contradicts it. Tricking someone into believing a falsity is deceitful and the same thing as lying to them. Is God a deceiving liar? I thought Satan is the one who is attributed those properties.
Maybe the entire universe spins around the earth in the opposite direction?
Which would mean that stars would be moving way faster than c, and kept in their orbits around the Earth by an unknown force.
amusing and sad [...] how you[...]. You lack internal consistency in your world view.
Warp wrote:
You haven't been reading anything I have been writing, have you? [...]you not understand
Warp wrote:
Do you understand
Warp wrote:
please start [...] instead of pseudoscientific crap. For your own good.
Warp wrote:
Do you understand that you are[...]
Warp wrote:
You seem to be mindlessly repeating[...] You don't even understand what you are saying. You are effectively saying[...] I don't think you even know
Warp wrote:
So you are basically saying
Warp wrote:
You see, that's another annoying
Warp wrote:
I don't think you understand
No, Warp, I don't think it's your avatar that makes people think you are angry. You just are awfully confrontational. (Sorry about an off-topic post but I could not think how better to expose such an example. And yes, I know this post is confrontational.)
No, Warp, I don't think it's your avatar that makes people think you are angry. You just are awfully confrontational. (Sorry about an off-topic post but I could not think how better to expose such an example.)
I don't regret in the least calling such books "pseudoscientific crap". If that's in your opinion confrontational, then so be it.
As for the rest, you emphasized the usage of the word "you" in every instance. What's the problem with that? How else should I address somebody? In the third person?
What's the problem with that? How else should I address somebody? In the third person?
Pit topics against each others, not people. Confrontational discussion style pits people against people and uses the you-word quite often. I emphasized such occurrences to make the degree thereof rather obvious.
Pit topics against each others, not people. Confrontational discussion style pits people against people and uses the you-word quite often. I emphasized such occurrences to make the degree thereof rather obvious.
I don't deny that as the discussion with sudgy progressed I got more emotional than I perhaps should have, but it's difficult to remain absolutely calm in these types of topics. However, I don't think addressing someone directly with "you" is a sign of anything in itself. That's how you speak to people. In many cases I used the third person (with expressions like "creationists"), but I don't think that's in principle any better (or worse) because it's clear who I'm referring to.
Of course it's a different topic in itself whether it's socially correct to tell someone about your opinion that they may be biased and other such things. I'd say that would perhaps be out of place if it came completely out of nowhere and was off-topic. However, in this kind of thread it's something that can be expected. If someone participates in such threads, they should have some thickness of skin because heavy criticism on their world view is to be expected. I don't think that's so unreasonable.
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Warp, faith is not based on evidence. It's based on imagination.
How are we supposed to debate imagination?
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself.
It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the
kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional
functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success."
- Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
