Its just a little strange that you would say the Bible is not the word of God, when every modern day major religious denomination would say otherwise. In the Lutheran faith, they say, “The Word of the Lord” after reciting bible passages. Likewise in the Presbyterian church. Baptist ministries shout on television that the Bible is the actual voice of God. If you are saying that these “small-o” churches are dragging your religion through the mud, then I’d say you have a lot to complain about, since over 50% of Christians in the US belong to a Protestant branch.

Again, we are sidetracked from the point of this discussion, which is about Young Earth Creationists and their attacks on science, not about Christianity or religion in general. However, I think that the YEC’s all start out learning from the mainstream religious groups, then get led astray somewhere along the line. I can see how that could easily happen whenever you teach children that your religion is correct, and everyone else’s is wrong.

B-)

http://scienceblogs.com/highlyallochthonous/2007/07/where_the_moon_was_at_32_billi.php#more

way cool stuff.

Just to play devil’s advocate: What about 1 Corinthians 7:10 (not too far above it)?

Go for it. Call it your religious conviction or something, based on one man’s interpretation of one translation of one chapter of one book. Of course, on that basis, no one would call it a serious religious conviction.

Oh, wait…

tacitus: They claim you must have eyewitness evidence (despite the fact that it is often among the most unreliable form of evidence available!) and that since only God was there, the Bible is the only valid eyewitness testimony for prehistoric times.

Which evidence would you hope would sway the jury in your trial for murder: the eyewitness who says he saw you do it, or the forensic evidence that indicates you couldn’t possibly have done it? Is it simply the case that the eyewitness testimony is stronger? Should they both be given equal weight?

For a literary example, consider To Kill a Mockingbird. A poor fellow is being tried for a crime he couldn’t possibly have committed because of a serious handicap. “Eyewitnesses” say that they saw him do it. He is convicted. There is no doubt left in the reader’s mind that the verdict is grossly unjust and that the jury is at fault. If eyewitness testimony is the only kind that “counts”, how could the jury possibly have been at fault for an unjust verdict? The jurors were acting on the basis of the best available evidence!

tacitus: I once asked a creationist what he would believe if aliens stopped by Earth and dropped off video recordings they’d made of Earth’s billion-year history. He quite honestly replied that he would believe that the recordings were faked.

That’s when you know you’re talking to someone to whom evidence doesn’t matter.

No matter what you believe, I think it’s valuable to ask yourself: What would I need to see or understand in order for me to accept that what I currently believe is not true?

I once asked a creationist what he would believe if aliens stopped by Earth and dropped off video recordings they’d made of Earth’s billion-year history. He quite honestly replied that he would believe that the recordings were faked.

“The Sun stays together in spite of the pressure created by its intense heat because of its overwhelming gravity. Do you remember if your professor had an explanation for why the planets didn’t dissipate under their own heat after the Sun flung them off?”

Only vaguely…had something to do with the lower temp of sunspots, I think. In his theory, they were flung off as solid bodies, I remember that.

Not an astronomer here but enjoyed reading the articles and responses.

One thing I note for sure in all your discussion is the unwillingness to acknowledge holes in one side of the argument by those who propagate that argument.

For me, reading to all the theories of the facts of evolution without also hearing those who vouch for it be realistic and list out the problems we also encounter seems to me to resemble very much the ‘hands on ears’ approach that the author of this article very much resents!

I do know this universe is amazing and incredible and for us to have found answers that completely satisfy all the variables is not likely..

..whole truth please!

“Word of God” is an honorific phrase. Small-o orthodox Christians believe that the Bible has a special and unique place in the relationship between God and Man. But the idea that it was somehow verbally dictated to a host of amanuenses playing Tiro to God’s Cicero is naïve at best, at worst, just one more excuse for the prideful to say, “I’m better than you,” to the world.

Fundamentalism (where it is not the product of innocent ignorance or feeble-mindedness) is wicked and un-Christian, and I’m tired of having the name of my religion dragged through the mud by these people.

Me: the Moon is receding because of tides, which is an inverse cube force

Ack. Tides aren’t a force. They’re the result of a force.

And sorry this got misattributed; it was stated by SteveT, not me, though I totally agree.

I can just picture the comment above being “cut-and-pasted” to some creationist website with an accompanying crow of triumph at having finally caught a scientist admitting that they (the creationists) have been right all along!

Unfortunately, there’s little you can do about quote mining.

If distant galaxies being visible were the only piece of evidence that the Earth is old, I might give the idea of a young-Earth-within-an-old-Universe some processing time on the old brain. It isn’t, not by a long shot, so I won’t.

There are many evidences on the Earth that the Earth is old. No isotope with a half-life shorter than 75 million years exists in detectable levels on this planet (unless it is the daughter of a much longer-lived isotope). Large formations exist that cannot have formed quickly (e.g., the Great Coral Reef). Continuous records of various processes go back many, many years (e.g., ice layers in Greenland and Antarctica). We see formations in the geologic column that could not have formed underwater. Investigation of rugose coral indicates shorter days in the distant past in a way consistent with the Earth’s slowing through tidal interaction with the Moon.

That ought to get you started.

Yakko: isn’t gravity an inverse square force?

Ye, it is. But the Moon is receding because of tides, which is an inverse cube force (being gravitational force integrated with respect to distance). Worse, it’s as a result of tidal friction, which is very difficult to predict. The current recession rate of 1.5 inches per year is near maximum, according to NASA.

Daffy: I did have a college astronomy professor, Fred Johnson, author of “Voyage into Astronomy,” who claimed that stars did indeed belch out planets.

The Sun stays together in spite of the pressure created by its intense heat because of its overwhelming gravity. Do you remember if your professor had an explanation for why the planets didn’t dissipate under their own heat after the Sun flung them off?

SteveT: I have heard it argued by creationists that radioactive dating gives the wrong answer for the age of the Earth (etc), because the atomic decay rates were NOT constant in years past.

Here’s the thing. It’s fairly easy to show that the rate of the Moon’s recession must have been different in the past. We’ve submitted radioactive materials to every test we can think of, and nothing alters the speed of their decay. Which do you think is more reasonable as a metric to use for aging things?

I can just picture the comment above being “cut-and-pasted” to some creationist website with an accompanying crow of triumph at having finally caught a scientist admitting that they (the creationists) have been right all along!

Sticks: One question I have for the anti-YEC faith camp, if that makes sense, how do they square with both Genesis 1 and Exodus 20:11 with the commonly accepted timescales for evolution.

Simple. The Sabbath doesn’t always refer to one day in seven, even in the Bible. There were Sabbath years, for example. God was setting up the one-in-seven pattern, not saying that it took Him a week to create everything.

Note that the seventh “day” never ends in Genesis. In fact, Hebrews 4 tells us that it’s still going.

Sticks: In those passages the Hebrew word used for day is locked into the 24 hour period by the phrase in Genesis 1 “Morning and Evening”

Not true. The same word for “day” (yom in Hebrew) is modified by “morning and evening” (singular in the Hebrew, but not in English translations) in Daniel 8:26 to refer to the contents of a vision that goes from Daniel’s time to the end of the world — at least 3000 years by any metric. “Morning and evening” is a common way to refer to long, indefinite stretches of time in Hebrew (and in all Semitic languages, for that matter).

Sticks: One of the commenter’s on the editorial also mentioned the one about sin and death, which seems quite a powerful argument, so I suspect a reconcilliation is not due anytime soon.

I’ve refuted those comments on that page. The relevant passages never say that death in general did not exist before Adam sinned.

tacitus: “How do you know? Were you there? Why couldn’t conditions have been different in the past? We know Noah’s Flood changed everything…”

I know this isn’t your argument, but in a sense, you were there, because there is here. In much the same way a forensic scientist reconstructs a crime from the evidence left behind, we can reconstruct the Earth’s history using the clues left for our examination.

Cecil: Most people on the Evolution side of the camp have not thought critically about the science – it has been taught to you that way since you were a third grader and you have never doubted it once.

I can’t speak for most, but it’s certainly not true for me. I was a young-Earth creationist for most of my life. I’m now an evolutionist — that is to say, a regular old scientist — who believes in an old Earth.

changazn: Evolution is also a religion.

Yes. Just like Utah is also an overweight hamster. Evolution is a theory subject to revision in the light of fact and evidence. Religion is not.

chanagazn: Radio carbon dating? Living snails have been radio carbon dated at 27,000 years old.

Cite, please.

Well done, chan! That was so good, I half suspected that you are just a troll. So hard to tell with YECs.

“Alec, you are. . . stupid.

What you think you KNOW, can never be proven.

Yes, the Bible was written by man, but the men were writing it as God told them too.”

The irony is strong with this one.

I like how creationist wingnuts try to denigrate proper science as a religion, without realizing how poorly it reflects on the nonsense they themselves believe in.

Just another lame round of special pleading with a dash of tu quoque fallacy.

“Yes, the Bible was written by man, but the men were writing it as God told them too.”

Please provide any evidence for this statement.

Just watched Nova Science Now from a couple of weeks ago. One scientist is putting simple organic molecules into high pressure and heat environments (i.e. sealed in a gold tube and placed in a chamber), then after a week or so, opening and placing the results in water. Bingo – self-organizing structures of complex organic molecules. Still a far cry from creating cells from scratch, but no biologist assumes that cells were a quick, simple development from organic molecules.

A previous episode discussed other research, including how some forms of clay can serve as scaffolds for oranic molecules to form. Again, hints at how order and complexity develop via natural processes.

changazn said:
> And whats with all this religion bashing? Evolution is also a religion.

Incorrect. You saying it is does not make it so.

> You BELIEVE that life was formed after an infinitesimal speck of nothing exploded 4.6 billion years ago and expanded faster than the speed of light and that the Earth was a gigantic rock after it cooled down and that chemicals caused rain to pound the earth for millions and millions of years and that life rose up from this ’soup’.

First off, in the strict sense none of that is “Evolution”. Evolution deals with how life diversified and spread across Earth. I suppose one could extend “Evolution” to talk about biological development all the way back, but scientists don’t use it that way. But yes, what you are describing is the naturalistic development of the universe, from origins to life on Earth.

Second, what you are describing is a somewhat oversimplified version of the results of scientific investigation. We “BELIEVE” in this because it’s what the data shows, in the same way we “believe” objects fall because of gravity, or light is part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Part of your problem is the use of the word “believe”. There is much confusion over that word. Some people use it as a synonym for faith. However, this is misleading. Some people try to distinguish belief from knowledge, however that is an intricate philosophical distinction. Rather, consider that a belief is “an idea that is held to be true”. Note that my definition of belief does not indicate the basis for the determination of true, only the conditional judgment.

There are two main methods of determining truth that are the standards being argued. One is Faith – belief despite evidence. The other is Empiricism – following the data. Science is founded on empiricism, not faith. For me to “believe” in the Big Bang, universal expansion, Earth coalescing out of the dust cloud, cooling of Earth leading to complex chemistry that eventually led to life, does not equate to me holding these beliefs based upon faith. I hold them based upon evidence, and am open to reevaluating them based upon more evidence.

Religion is a belief structure that relies upon Faith rather than evidence. So by definitions, belief in the findings of science is not a religion.

> YOU THINK YOU CAME FROM A ROCK.

Genesis 2:7 – the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,

Apparently, you do, too.

> Radio carbon dating? Living snails have been radio carbon dated at 27,000 years old.

Cite, please.

On a serious note, does anyone here know of a good rebuttal to CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity?

changazn, evolution is no more a religion than gravity or magnetism is. I don’t have to “believe” in gravity. I can prove it to you by throwing a rock into the air. Its only slightly more difficult to prove that live evolves, but only because of the lifespans of most living organisms. Perhaps you can take a lesson or three in biology. And even after you are proven wrong, I still wouldn’t call you stupid. Just ignorant.

B-)

By the way, the Bible itself says that it isn’t written by God.

Repent while you still can. Fundamentalism is just another word for devil worship.