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Senate Christianity Discussion Thread

Discussion in 'Community' started by Jabba-wocky, Aug 1, 2013.

  1. Lord Vivec

    Lord Vivec Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Apr 17, 2006
    "Evolutionists" isn't a thing. Anyone who understands any basic biology accepts evolution as the best explanation for the diversity of life.

    Also, everyone, stop talking about proof. Proof is an unscientific concept. Evidence is what matters here, not proof.
     
    Lowbacca_1977 likes this.
  2. LostOnHoth

    LostOnHoth Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Feb 15, 2000
  3. timmoishere

    timmoishere Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 2, 2007
    Perhaps a basic understanding of scientific principles is in order:

    1) Hypothesis - a proposed explanation for a phenomenon
    2) Theory - a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of knowledge that has been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experimentation.
    3) Law - a statement based on repeated experimental observations that describes some aspect of the world.

    Creationism is a hypothesis, evolution is a theory, gravity is a law.
     
    Sarge likes this.
  4. Skywalker8921

    Skywalker8921 Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2011
    I notice, timmoishere, that you didn't answer my previous question about these articles you linked to after I pretty thoroughly debunked some of the points raised in the trial article. Do you want me to go through the ressurrection article you linked to? I'd be happy to.

    Ti's true that the age of the Earth was never something Jesus spoke about, but I think we can infer it from using the various chronological information presented in the Bible in verses such as I Kings 6:1. Also Summer Dreamer and timmoishere, I misspoke in my previous post. I should have said the the Earth is at least 6,000 to possibly 7,000 or 8,000 years old, not 4,000 to 6,000. The reason I say possibly 7,000 or 8,000 and not simply 6,000 is because of the large timespans mentioned for the first ten patriarchs in Genesis 1. I don't think that extra generations not mentioned could be inserted anywhere in the Genesis 5 chronology, but I could be wrong.
     
  5. Skywalker8921

    Skywalker8921 Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2011
    True, but remember, the text has been translated by humans, who are prone to errors. Naturally, the original meanings of some verses have been altered over the millenia due to translators. Very few, IIRC, didn't have access to the original Hebrew manuscripts as the centuries went by.Nevertheless, it still remains God's Word.

    Yes, I know of the Apocrypha and the Gnostic Gospels. By the way, the Gnostic Gospels ARE apocrypha. Perhaps the Old Testament Apocryhpa is on the same level as the canon, perhaps not. I'm not qualified to judge that, and, as it is well known, some branches of Christianity (ie the Catholics) accept the apocrypha, while other branches (ie Protestants) do not.

    I think this table at the very end of this article:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon

    speaks for itself about the NT canon. None of the Gnostic Gospels are even mentioned, and according to the article on the Gnostic Gospels itself, the earliest penned GG was held to be the Gospel of Thomas, dating back to the mid second century; as of 95 AD, the only disciple of Jesus who was still living was John. Thomas and all the others were long dead.
     
  6. timmoishere

    timmoishere Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 2, 2007
    Again, the oldest human remains ever discovered are around 200000 years old. This totally disproves your assertion that the earth is only 8000 years old. Give it up already. The story of creationism is a complete fabrication.
     
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  7. anakinfansince1983

    anakinfansince1983 Skywalker Saga/LFL/YJCC Manager star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Mar 4, 2011
    There actually is a way to reconcile the Bible story with scientific evidence. The Bible essentially got the order right (i.e. humans showing up last), it just left out a lot of information (including but not limited to the appearance of other planets) and obviously uses a very different time frame.

    But in order to reconcile the two, as the majority of the religious members of my family have done, one has to not stubbornly cling to the idea that God created the Earth in seven literal 24-hour periods, or that the Bible writers were actually capable of writing down every single generation that ever appeared in the book of Numbers.
     
  8. Skywalker8921

    Skywalker8921 Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2011
    Proof?
     
  9. timmoishere

    timmoishere Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 2, 2007
    Radiometric dating of meteorites found in Arizona prove the earth is around 4.6 billion years old.

    Another method of dating was used to determine an approximate age of the human remains found.



    Well, unless you're going to seriously contend that dinosaurs lived alongside humans, SkywalkerNumbers' assertion that there was no death before Adam and Eve cannot possibly be true. The dinosaurs died out around 65 million BC, so this shows the assertion cannot be correct.
     
  10. anakinfansince1983

    anakinfansince1983 Skywalker Saga/LFL/YJCC Manager star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Mar 4, 2011
    Here is the abstract for an article in a peer-reviewed international science journal giving the date for early-Homo occupation for the southern Caucasus region at 1.8 million years ago.

    Here is another abstract for an article in another peer-reviewed science journal giving the date for the earliest human remains in Australia dating about 61,000 years ago.

    Here is an abstract for an article in a peer-reviewed biology journal suggesting a human population in southern Africa in the Pleistocene era (125,000-10,000 years ago).

    One search in Google Scholar turned up several articles written by PhDs in science, reviewed by several others with PhDs in science, all indicating that the Earth is way the hell older than 6,000-8,000 years.

    LOL, yeah, I was taken to church every Sunday as a kid and I never heard that dinosaurs lived alongside humans, that the Earth was only 6,000 years old or that nobody died before Adam and Eve until I reached adulthood and ran into Bible literalists and young earth believers.
     
  11. Skywalker8921

    Skywalker8921 Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2011
    Look up "Leviathan" on the 'Net and tell me if that creature is not remarkably similiar to a dinosaur. anakinfansince1983, you would seriously put stock in human research that could be flawed?
     
  12. anakinfansince1983

    anakinfansince1983 Skywalker Saga/LFL/YJCC Manager star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Mar 4, 2011
    As opposed to a religious book written by religious men with no credentials whatsoever other than being old men who claimed that they had talked to God?

    This is a serious question?


    Yes, when I want information about science, including geology and anthropology, I am going to turn to the people who are actually educated on the subject.

    But the anti-education stance of the religious right suddenly became much clearer, not to mention more amusing.
     
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  13. Sarge

    Sarge Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Oct 4, 1998
    God created animals and man. Some of their bones were fossilized later. Creation is not invalidated.
    As for radiometric dating, I am very skeptical about its accuracy. There have been instances of objects of known age which were tested and the results were way off.
     
  14. timmoishere

    timmoishere Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 2, 2007
    If you think the research done by accredited scientists is incorrect, by all means go do your own research and get it peer-reviewed. Publish your findings in a scientific journal.

    And when you say "There have been instances of objects of known age which were tested and the results were way off," you are absolutely correct. Science is an ever-growing, ever-expanding field. New knowledge can sometimes trump older assumptions, but in so doing, helps further our understanding of the universe.

    So please use your new knowledge that only you know about to debunk the method of radiometric dating. Please demonstrate your techniques to the scientific community so that everyone can see the results of your experiment.
     
    anakinfansince1983 likes this.
  15. Skywalker8921

    Skywalker8921 Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2011
    Humans have flaws. Their research could be flawed. Besides, an article I just read said that the Mt. St. Helen's eruption 33 years ago dumped 25 feet on sediment in a single afternoon. I wouldn't be surprised if many rock layers that scienctists say are millions of years old are actually far less than that. Another thing, are these scienctists you believe considering the possibility that isotope ratios have changed during the centuries, or do they think they remain unchanged. Yet again, if fossils were buried over millions of years, do you really think they would be been preserved that long? How long do dead animals and plants last today before they rot and disappear? Not very long, no? Yet scienctists claim that the fossils were buried slowly over millions of years? If that were the case, no fossils would exist to be found!
     
  16. timmoishere

    timmoishere Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 2, 2007
    Yes, the research could be flawed, but you would have to actually have evidence of those flaws in order to seriously assert that. Again, please go out and do some research on your own before you dismiss the findings of accredited scientists.

    As for the preservation of dinosaur bones, it all depends on the environment where the dinosaur died. Some areas can preserve skeletons longer than other areas. A dinosaur who died in a landslide is more likely to have left an intact skeleton than a dinosaur who died in the middle of a jungle.
     
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  17. anakinfansince1983

    anakinfansince1983 Skywalker Saga/LFL/YJCC Manager star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Mar 4, 2011
    I'm going to try this one more time:

    Do you have an article from a peer-reviewed scientific journal demonstrating evidence that the Earth is only 6,000 years old or that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time?

    Your repeated assertions that God wrote the Bible and therefore the Bible is proof in and of itself only works on people who believe that God wrote the Bible. Even in my churchgoing days I never believed that.

    But go to scholar.google.com and do a search for any number of young-earth-creationist terms; if you find a journal article written by a scientist with a degree that proves that he or she knows what he or she is talking about, I'll believe it.
     
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  18. Skywalker8921

    Skywalker8921 Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2011
  19. timmoishere

    timmoishere Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 2, 2007
    Think about this, Skywalker: The folks who wrote the Bible didn't even know the Earth revolved around the sun, much less that the world was round. If they didn't even know that, how can they be trusted about anything else? Shouldn't an all-knowing god have told them as much?

    Edit: As for Sarfati, he is notoriously unreliable:

    "According to the Creation Ministries International website, Sarfati was a founder of the Wellington Christian Apologetics Society in New Zealand, and has long retained an interest in Christian apologetics and the creation versus evolution debate.His first two books, Refuting Evolution in 1999, and Refuting Evolution 2 in 2002, are intended as rebuttals to theNational Academy of Sciences' publication Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science and the PBS/Nova series "Evolution", respectively. Refuting Compromise, published in 2004, is Sarfati's rebuttal of the day-age creationist teachings of Dr. Hugh Ross, who attempts to harmonise the Genesis account of creation with mainstream science regarding the age of the earth and the possible size of the Biblical Flood, against which Sarfati defends a literal biblical timeline and a global flood. Eugenie Scott and Glenn Branchof the National Center for Science Education called Sarfati's Refuting Evolution a "crude piece of propaganda".

    Sarfati's critics, such as Reed A. Cartwright and Dr Douglas L. Theobald, have criticised Sarfati's claims such as one that accuses scientists of continually changing the definition of vestigial to match the evidence. In their criticism, Cartwright and Douglas note that Sarfati's PhD is in physical chemistry, not biology. Sarfati himself has criticised some of his opponents for their lack of appropriate credentials, noting of one researcher, that he was an anthropologist, and therefore "anything he says about radiometric dating should be taken with a large grain of salt."


    So yeah, this dude doesn't know what he's talking about. Creation science isn't really science at all, because it lacks one crucial aspect of science: empirical support. Nice try, though.
     
    anakinfansince1983 likes this.
  20. Skywalker8921

    Skywalker8921 Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2011
    I beg to differ, timmoishere.

    "It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in: " (Isaiah 40:22)
     
  21. Sarge

    Sarge Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Oct 4, 1998
    You find sources that say "Your sources are wrong!" and we find sources that say, "No, your sources are wrong! We don't believe your sources!"
    This is not a productive way to debate.
     
  22. timmoishere

    timmoishere Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 2, 2007
    I would still love to see which sources say that radiometric dating is wrong, though.
     
  23. anakinfansince1983

    anakinfansince1983 Skywalker Saga/LFL/YJCC Manager star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Mar 4, 2011
    I agree.

    Has this Safarti person been published in a peer-reviewed journal?
     
  24. timmoishere

    timmoishere Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 2, 2007
    Here's the thing, though anakinfansince1983. Creationists have an agenda to interpret any scientific data so that it conforms with their previously held beliefs. Flying Spaghetti Monster forbid that they actually change their beliefs to adapt to the new information. But I guess that's cognitive dissonance for ya...
     
  25. Skywalker8921

    Skywalker8921 Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2011
    I agree, too, and I'm not playing @timmoishere's game anymore. He keeps demanding scientific sources and doesn't even bother to pay attention to my replies and ignores the questions I ask of him - I notice he still has not responded to my debunking of Austin Cline's contradiction articles that he cites as sources that the Bible is full of errors. As the verse I just posted from Isaiah shows, the Bible is reliable proof on the questions of dinosaurs, humans, and death. I have provided all the proof I'm going to provide. It's right there - you just don't want to believe it.