The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 1)

Ciaran500

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19956961/

"Pope Benedict XVI said the debate raging in some countries — particularly the United States and his native Germany — between creationism and evolution was an “absurdity,” saying that evolution can coexist with faith."

“This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.”

Err, opinions JC?

Zombrex

Ciaran500 wrote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19956961/

"Pope Benedict XVI said the debate raging in some countries — particularly the United States and his native Germany — between creationism and evolution was an “absurdity,” saying that evolution can coexist with faith."

“This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.”

Err, opinions JC?

Since most Creationists seem to be Protestant or Islamic I'm not sure the Pope's opinion is going to be listened to. In fact, since he is often seen by these groups to be a minion of Satan sent to turn people away from the true faith, this will probably be strong support for the Creationists.

Ekancone

God.

BrianCalgary

Wicknight wrote:

Ultimately that is the paradox that Creationists/Biblical Literalists have to contend with.

If the world isn't actually the way it looks then why does it actually look like it does?

Why does the universe look like it is 10+ billion years old.
Why does the Earth look like it is 4+ billion years old.
Why does the fossil record look like life has been on the Earth for billion of years?
Why does it look like life on Earth, including humans, evolve from older species?
Why does it look like human civilization ran without hick up through the period of the Biblical Flood?
Why do genetic maps of modern humans not look at all like humans all descended from two original humans?

etc etc etc...

There seems to be three common explanations put forward by Creationists for this, it is a test, it is a mistake, it is a conspiracy.
.

Wrong again here on the explanations here wicknight.

At the wedding of Cana, Christ turned water into wine. It was the best wine, wine needs to be aged. Which means that Christ created aged wine, although it had only existed for a minute. In order for it to be the best wine, it had to be aged. God can do it.

In order for the universe and evrything in it to be stable and provide the foundation for the life that we know, it had to be aged (like the wine).

No conspiracy, no test and no mistake. But a necessity in order to have our life sustained and maintained.

But scientists refuse to accept this a possibility within their exploration of the world around us.

rockbeer

Utterly bizarre isn't it?
Every species on the planet makes its way in the world by using its best assets to maximum advantage.

Humanity's best asset is our amazing power to reason. And every application of our reasoning abilities to the question of our origin leads us ever further from biblical 'science' and 'history'. In other words, further from god.

Yet we are supposed to believe that god wants us, uniquely on the planet to my knowledge, to abandon our primary asset - the very power he is supposed to have given us - and rely on faith instead to answer these questions.

Madness.

And this isn't a free-will question, that one doesn't cover it I'm afraid, unless we are to believe that all science is evil. In which case I hope any christians in the room are off to sell their cars and houses tomorrow and start gathering plenty of firewood.

Or can someone point me to the bit in the bible that says humans shouldn't engage in biology or zoology, genetics, physics, geology, or any other science which leads us further from ancient superstition.

Proponents of such an argument are the direct intellectual descendants of those who locked up Gallileo and burned heretics at the stake. They may no longer advocate such punitive measures against dissenters, nonetheless their willingness to neglect their power of reason in order to sustain their comfort blanket of faith makes this only a question of degree.

rockbeer

BrianCalgary wrote:

In order for it to be the best wine, it had to be aged. God can do it.

In order for the universe and evrything in it to be stable and provide the foundation for the life that we know, it had to be aged (like the wine).

No conspiracy, no test and no mistake. But a necessity in order to have our life sustained and maintained.

Brian, forgive me, but would you say literally anything in defence of your position?

That's how it looks from here.

It really doesn't seem to bother you that your arguments are entirely self-referential. Well, OK, but you can't really expect anyone with a genuinely enquiring mind to accept 'it's magic' as a satisfactory answer can you?

BrianCalgary

rockbeer wrote:

Utterly bizarre isn't it?
Every species on the planet makes its way in the world by using its best assets to maximum advantage..

Agreed, Isn't it great that God made us that way.

rockbeer wrote:

Humanity's best asset is our amazing power to reason. And every application of our reasoning abilities to the question of our origin leads us ever further from biblical 'science' and 'history'. In other words, further from god..

Further only to those that want nothing to do with Him. When I look at all that is around me,; I am constantly impressed by how God brought it all together and thereby get closer to Him through His creation.

rockbeer wrote:

Yet we are supposed to believe that god wants us, uniquely on the planet to my knowledge, to abandon our primary asset - the very power he is supposed to have given us - and rely on faith instead to answer these questions..

Absolutely not. Jesus even told us to seek the truth, yet science doesn't even consider a possibility.

rockbeer wrote:

Madness..

Yes, atheists do practice it.

rockbeer wrote:

And this isn't a free-will question, that one doesn't cover it I'm afraid, unless we are to believe that all science is evil. In which case I hope any christians in the room are off to sell their cars and houses tomorrow and start gathering plenty of firewood..

Rockbeer, you were looking good up until this insane statemnt. I can go and get into my car and drive it. It is real.

Science that explores the origins of the universe looks at evidence without any eyewitnesses, although I contend that God was a witness and gave us His testimony in Genesis, therefore my car and origins are not related.

rockbeer wrote:

Or can someone point me to the bit in the bible that says humans shouldn't engage in biology or zoology, genetics, physics, geology, or any other science which leads us further from ancient superstition..

Nowhere, in fact it encourages the opposite.

rockbeer wrote:

Proponents of such an argument are the direct intellectual descendants of those who locked up Gallileo and burned heretics at the stake. They may no longer advocate such punitive measures against dissenters, nonetheless their willingness to neglect their power of reason in order to sustain their comfort blanket of faith makes this only a question of degree.

If only that argument existed within Christendom, then you would have a point.

Jesus advocates exploration and the use of our brains, particular churches may not encourage it, but God does, don't confuse the two.

rockbeer wrote:

Brian, forgive me, but would you say literally anything in defence of your position?

That's how it looks from here.

It really doesn't seem to bother you that your arguments are entirely self-referential. Well, OK, but you can't really expect anyone with a genuinely enquiring mind to accept 'it's magic' as a satisfactory answer can you?.

you are forgiven.

there is a difference between magic and miracle. Magic involves deceit and sleight of hand.

A miracle actually happens. And Jesus performed quite a few of them in His day.

Yet science can't explain it so it doesn't accept it as a possibility.

Therein lies the problem, science ignores a possibility.

Son Goku

PDN wrote:

Scofflaw has given me a straight answer, that such growth is, in his opinion, impossible. This is because people would have to travel too far. This seems reasonable and something I hadn't considered (probably because I have been led astray by Jared Diamond's fanciful ideas of small groups of people travelling thousands of miles in canoes to colonise uninhabited lands).

The growth would be impossible anyway in physical circumstances. What I was trying the get across is that it is prohibited at a logical level, unless you assume infinite resources.
Practically it is definitely impossible.

PDN wrote:

OK, so it's impossible to say that a population grew at any rate, fast or slow? Therefore every theory of population numbers between two points in time (including JC's) are meaningless and have no way of being thought of as feasible or not?

No. The key word is growth rate. Rates require derivatives and derivatives require smooth functions. Population is smooth. That doesn't mean theories of population are useless, just that they're not based on continuous phenomena unless you pass to the high population limit.

BrianCalgary wrote:

A miracle actually happens. And Jesus performed quite a few of them in His day.
Yet science can't explain it so it doesn't accept it as a possibility.

Total ass Brian, there is no evidence it ever happened. I notice you don't fault science for not explaining the miracles of Shiva.

rockbeer

BrianCalgary wrote:

science ignores a possibility.

'Science' does no such thing. (And I was sure you said there was no conspiracy.)

Scientists are at liberty (given the obvious budgetary and time constraints) to direct their research however they will. The fact is that scientists don't view creation myths as worthy of research because their is literally nothing upon which to base any such research. Scientifically speaking.

Brian, please think about this: scientists don't research religion because there is nothing to research.

Religion is a phantasm. And J C is representative of the best 'creation science' has to offer.

You might not like it, but you have to either deal with it or pull your faith-blanket a little tighter round you.

BrianCalgary wrote:

Further only to those that want nothing to do with Him. When I look at all that is around me,; I am constantly impressed by how God brought it all together and thereby get closer to Him through His creation.

Yet you have repeatedly admitted your scientific ignorance on this thread. Proper scientific knowledge virtually always leads away from christian belief. Fact. Ignorance, onthe other hand, is a shelter behind wich the faithful hide.

Being in awe of the natural world is emphatically not the same as having a scientific understanding of it. It was awe which led our ancestors to invent religion, and knowledge which leads current generations to reject it.

BrianCalgary wrote:

I can go and get into my car and drive it. It is real.

You miss my point. Of course it is real. Just as real as evolution and zoology and all the other scientific evidence which indicates biblical 'history' not to be true. The only difference is you can see and touch your car, whereas you don't understand those other things. They make little direct impact on your life so they don't seem real to you, but they are every bit as real as your car.

BrianCalgary wrote:

If only that argument existed within Christendom, then you would have a point.

I see that argument wheeled out time after time on boards. Whenever the scientific evidence contradicts christianity, christians are regularly to be found hiding behind their lack of understanding of the evidence.

Scofflaw

BrianCalgary wrote:

In order for the universe and evrything in it to be stable and provide the foundation for the life that we know, it had to be aged (like the wine).

No conspiracy, no test and no mistake. But a necessity in order to have our life sustained and maintained.

Again, though, this constrains God. Jesus' wine did not actually have to be aged, but only to taste the same as if it had. God's world does not have to be aged, since no-one requires the world to be aged except by virtue of the apparent evidence that it is. If God actually has to make the world as if it had been made 4.6 billion years ago, then God is not omnipotent.

Further, if God has to make the world as if it had been made 4.6 billion years ago, then the most obvious thing to do is to make it 4.6 billion years ago. We might not like to think of all the things that happened before us - but what is time to God?

Finally, and the kicker - whichever God did, you and I won't be able to tell the difference.

BrianCalgary wrote:

But scientists refuse to accept this a possibility within their exploration of the world around us.

No, it's just not an examinable possibility. I've heard it said, usually by geologists, usually immediately followed by "so let's go to the pub" - because if it is true, you might as well.

BrianCalgary wrote:

Science that explores the origins of the universe looks at evidence without any eyewitnesses, although I contend that God was a witness and gave us His testimony in Genesis, therefore my car and origins are not related.

Again and again we revisit this point. When a scientist is dealing with something that happened without witnesses (nearly all geology), he is forced to construct his hypothesis so that it necessarily produces some effect that can be witnessed.

If a geologist says "this rock was laid down under such and such conditions", then he must show that you can see in it things that are characteristic of those conditions as observed today, and not of other conditions. It's called "forensic science".

BrianCalgary wrote:

I can go and get into my car and drive it. It is real.

Science that explores the origins of the universe looks at evidence without any eyewitnesses, although I contend that God was a witness and gave us His testimony in Genesis, therefore my car and origins are not related.

What do you put in your car, Brian? Petrol and oil. Where does that come from? Underground, where it is located by the science of geology, which is the most forensic of the forensic sciences you decry as lacking witnesses.

I've said it before - oil companies would use "Biblical" geology if it worked. It doesn't, and "old-earth", uniformitarian, geology does. It's proven just as real as the car you couldn't drive without it.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Ciaran500

For someone who earlier said he would sit on the fence until he under stood the science behind evolution you seem to have not trouble taking a shot at science Brian.

BrianCalgary

Ciaran500 wrote:

For someone who earlier said he would sit on the fence until he under stood the science behind evolution you seem to have not trouble taking a shot at science Brian.

Scofflaw, I am so glad you talked about forensic science.

Ciaran, I am not taking a shot at science, just the scientists who study the forensics behind all creation, that will not take into consideration the possibility that God created evrything He did in order to sustain life as we kno wit. Hence aged rocks.

And to your point about oil scofflaw, the Bible does not give instructions in geology. A geologist studies the rock formations in order to best ascertain where the oil is, regardless of how it got there.

Is it not a possibility that God placed it there during creation 12,000 years ago, just so that we could find it and use it as energy in our modern world.

dan719

BrianCalgary wrote:

Scofflaw, I am so glad you talked about forensic science.

Ciaran, I am not taking a shot at science, just the scientists who study the forensics behind all creation, that will not take into consideration the possibility that God created evrything He did in order to sustain life as we kno wit. Hence aged rocks.

And to your point about oil scofflaw, the Bible does not give instructions in geology. A geologist studies the rock formations in order to best ascertain where the oil is, regardless of how it got there.

Is it not a possibility that God placed it there during creation 12,000 years ago, just so that we could find it and use it as energy in our modern world.

Yes of course it is a possibility, just basically an infinitismal one. Why would any supposedly intelligent being go to the trouble of making the universe appear billions of years old. I mean I don't think anyone/anything would get a kick out of seeing a guy in a white coat carrying out an experiment to measure the age of a rock saying 'ha i got him'. Of course that is what creationists would have us believe. So not only is your god made up. He seems a bit of an idiot too.

5uspect

BrianCalgary wrote:

I am not taking a shot at science, just the scientists who study the forensics behind all creation, that will not take into consideration the possibility that God created evrything He did in order to sustain life as we kno wit. Hence aged rocks..

Its got nothing to do with this group of scientists you think stubbornly refuse to acknowledge a god. Its got nothing to do with atheism. Its simply the way science works. God explains nothing because it cannot explain itself (to quote Dawkins I think). Science cannot say anything for or against god simply because you can just invoke his omnipotence and wish all the evidence away.

This is why creationism is nonsense. There is a possibility that the universe is a result of an all powerful being like your god. Its also just as likely the flying spaghetti monster did it and just as likely the universe popped into existence the moment you read this word. We have no way of knowing and so these ideas are not considered.

What is considered is the evidence and this has given us the ability to construct extremely good models for predicting the world around us. Newton was wrong, but his model still works extraordinarily well as a simplified model of the world. Quantum mechanics may also be totally wrong. All these theories are a step in the right direction and evolution is no different.

Jumping to the God Conclusion is really a very rash decision.

BrianCalgary

dan719 wrote:

Yes of course it is a possibility, just basically an infinitismal one. Why would any supposedly intelligent being go to the trouble of making the universe appear billions of years old. I mean I don't think anyone/anything would get a kick out of seeing a guy in a white coat carrying out an experiment to measure the age of a rock saying 'ha i got him'. Of course that is what creationists would have us believe. So not only is your god made up. He seems a bit of an idiot too.

That is not what creationists would have you believe.

My house is made of wood. The trees that became the wallstuds were potentially hundreds of years old when they were cut. Those trees were able to provide a 2x4 with a length of 92" in order to build my walls. You could try and measure the age of my house by measuring the age of the trees. It wouldn't work, you would be way off as my house is 13 years old. The tree in my backyard at 3 years could not provide the wood neccesary to provide a strong enough stud in order to prop up my wall.

My house needs old trees in order to provide the necessary shelter against the elements.

So in comclusion:
Our universe in general and our planet specifically needs 4.5 Billion year old rocks in order to provide the foundation to sustain our life.

God did not do it that way to try and fool anyone, He did however provide us with intelligence enough to understand and realize that this is a definite possibilty and He made wine at Cana as a show that He can create anything of any age at anytime.

MooseJam

BrianCalgary wrote:

So in comclusion:
Our universe in general and our planet specifically needs 4.5 Billion year old rocks in order to provide the foundation to sustain our life.

I disagree, there is nothing inherant in 4.5 billion year old rock that we need to sustain our life, we could happily live on a 1000 year old planet

Bisar

BrianCalgary wrote:

So in comclusion:
Our universe in general and our planet specifically needs 4.5 Billion year old rocks in order to provide the foundation to sustain our life.

From what do you draw that conclusion?

rockbeer

BrianCalgary wrote:

Our universe in general and our planet specifically needs 4.5 Billion year old rocks in order to provide the foundation to sustain our life.

Can you please explain, in scientific terms, what function 4.5 billion year old rocks perform that brand new ones wouldn't handle just as well.

I understand your house analogy - trees grow over time after all - but I'm not seeing how it applies to rocks 'providing the foundation to sustain life', as you put it.

Are you really saying god made the rocks 'appear' that old so they could contain the oil that nobody would discover for thousands of years, but that would later 'provide the foundation to sustain' our climate-wrecking, creation-destroying godless commercial-industrial lifestyles?

That is genuinely breathtaking, one of the bizarrest of all the bizarre claims in this whole 324 page thread. Are you actually serious? I'm honestly struggling, really genuinely struggling, to grasp that you can actually bring yourself to believe this utterly conceited illogic just so as to avoid having to reconsider your faith. All I can say is you must really need that faith.

I can understand this sort of thing from christians who don't think very much about things, but in your case it's different... you know better, you've examined the evidence, but you are still compelled to twist the life out of the facts in order to make them fit with your preconceived belief system.

But, even after all that twisting, they still don't fit do they? I mean, the rocks that don't contain oil don't need to be billions of years old, but they still 'appear' that way. So in their case he must have had some other purpose in mind. What do you conjecture that might have been? Maybe he did it for aesthetic reasons. Or was he just showing off? What function is served by non-sustaining geological relics such as temperate flora in arctic ice samples? Or are these just side-effects of the serious life-sustaining stuff?

By the way, you still haven't properly explained why god gave us our amazing ability to reason when its application leads us relentlessly further away from him.

BrianCalgary

rockbeer wrote:

Can you please explain, in scientific terms, what function 4.5 billion year old rocks perform that brand new ones wouldn't handle just as well..

No I can't. Just want to know whyit isn't considered as a possibility.

rockbeer wrote:

I understand your house analogy - trees grow over time after all - but I'm not seeing how it applies to rocks 'providing the foundation to sustain life', as you put it..

Thanks. I was beginning to get a bit worried.:o

rockbeer wrote:

Are you really saying god made the rocks 'appear' that old so they could contain the oil that nobody would discover for thousands of years, but that would later 'provide the foundation to sustain' our climate-wrecking, creation-destroying godless commercial-industrial lifestyles?.

No I contend that rocks that contain oil need to be that old in order to contain the oil. And that is the question I have. oil can not be made overnight, unless it is done by God. He is the only one that could do it overnight. Why not consider it as a possibility?

rockbeer wrote:

That is genuinely breathtaking, one of the bizarrest of all the bizarre claims in this whole 324 page thread. Are you actually serious? I'm honestly struggling, really genuinely struggling, to grasp that you can actually bring yourself to believe this utterly conceited illogic just so as to avoid having to reconsider your faith. All I can say is you must really need that faith..

have to admit that I'm lost here, as to what you are referring to?

rockbeer wrote:

I can understand this sort of thing from christians who don't think very much about things, but in your case it's different... you know better, you've examined the evidence, but you are still compelled to twist the life out of the facts in order to make them fit with your preconceived belief system..

Which bit?

rockbeer wrote:

But, even after all that twisting, they still don't fit do they? I mean, the rocks that don't contain oil don't need to be billions of years old, but they still 'appear' that way. So in their case he must have had some other purpose in mind. What do you conjecture that might have been? Maybe he did it for aesthetic reasons. Or was he just showing off? What function is served by non-sustaining geological relics such as temperate flora in arctic ice samples? Or are these just side-effects of the serious life-sustaining stuff?.

Elaborate on the temperate ice flora in the arctic.

rockbeer wrote:

By the way, you still haven't properly explained why god gave us our amazing ability to reason when its application leads us relentlessly further away from him.

Zombrex

BrianCalgary wrote:

In order for the universe and evrything in it to be stable and provide the foundation for the life that we know, it had to be aged (like the wine).

Why?

BrianCalgary wrote:

But a necessity in order to have our life sustained and maintained.

Again, why does the universe need to appear to be a lot older that it actually is for life to exist and be sustained?

Wine needs to be aged because it is only at a certain point in the process that the full flavour is released. That is just the way wine works. But if God wished to change this he could. As you state Jesus didn't create aged wine, Jesus created wine that was releasing flavour at optimum level. The wine itself was brand new. For all you know Jesus actually altered the taste buds or the chemical reaction in the brain of everyone at the party. They could have been drinking water yet believing it was the best tasting wine ever. Ultimately it is the same difference.

BrianCalgary wrote:

But scientists refuse to accept this a possibility within their exploration of the world around us.

You are damn right they do, because this is completely impossible to test or examine.

It would be like me placing a rock in front of you, waiting 5 minutes and then asking you to test if God did or did not just make that aged rock appear out of thin air 3 seconds ago while altering its physical appearance so it looks really old and altering your memory so you think you saw me go pick it up and put it in front of you.

Would you set out to test that God did or did not do this. Of course not, such a task would be impossible. You more likely than not would simply work under the assumption reality is as it appears to be and that 5 minutes ago I went and picked up a very old rock and placed it in front of you.

If the entire universe and everything in it looks, acts and functions as if it is very old there is absolutely no way to determine that all of this is actually very new and made by an undetectable supernatural force to just look really old.

Science itself would implode in a sea of ridiculousness if it started randomly guessing that things that appear, and always appear, to be and function one way are actually fakes and in fact are set up a completely different but just made to look another way

It reminds me of the old children's joke

What is blue and fluffy?

I don't know, what?

Blue fluff of course! What is red and fluffy?

Umm, red fluff?

No! Blue fluff dyed red!

Using the above analogy swapping the universe for some red fluff, science can just work with the fact that this thing in front of them is red and is fluffy.

If it is actually blue fluff that has been dyed red by God this is impossible to determine.

You claim it is actually blue fluffy simply because that is what is written in your holy book. You may wish that science consider this idea. Another religion may claim that it is green fluff dyed red, and demand that science considers this idea. Another may claim that it isn't fluffy at all, it is actually rock hard, God just makes it look fluffy, and how dare science claim that it is fluffy at all, it just looks and feels fluffy.

None of these religious theories are possible to test or verify.

At the end of the day science simply has something that is red and fluffy.

Wicknight

Wicknight wrote:

It reminds me of the old children's joke

I don't think blue fluff is alive :eek:


(dyed! )

rockbeer

BrianCalgary wrote:

Elaborate on the temperate ice flora in the arctic.

I'm not qualified in these matters, so I'm sure there are people here who can shed more light than I, but basically deep ice core samples are taken in the arctic in order to discover information about climatic/surface conditions at the time the ice was formed. This information is gained from dna suspended within the ice, as well as chemical analysis of the ice itself and no doubt other techniques I don't know much about.

The oldest dna samples found so far date back almost a million years:

http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article2739755.ece

While it doesn't demonstrate billions of years of pre-history, this example "suggests the ice cap has been in place for at least 450,000 years".

What was god's sustaining purpose in making a 10,000 year old ice cap appear to be half a million years old? These dna samples are useless for anything except for telling scientists what life used to be like. But according to your hypothesis, there wasn't even an earth back then so he can only be trying to deceive us.

There are other examples, such as the discovery of ancient fossilized matter from temperate zones beneath the arctic ice, which demonstrates the movement of tectonic plates millions of years ago. Again these fossils serve no purpose other than to educate scientists about the past - erroneously, in your opinion, but why should god want to achieve that?

BrianCalgary wrote:

have to admit that I'm lost here, as to what you are referring to?

The claim that god deliberately made the rocks old so they could contain the oil that we would need thousands of years later to develop the industrial consumer lifestyles that now threaten to destroy his creation. I would have thought this demonstrates a lack of foresight on his part. Why didn't he give us some non-CO2 producing fuel?

The point is that the rocks only need to be old to contain oil because the oil is formed by a natural process of compression which takes aeons of time. If god is going to sidestep that natural process entirely and whip up the oil supernaturally out of nothing then neither it nor the rocks that contain it would actually need to be nor look old now would they? Why in the name of all that is reasonable would he feel the need to create the illusion of a natural process having created something which he in fact achieved by magic? Did Jesus feel the need to serve up the wine in bottles labelled Rothschild 25 BC to add a nice touch of showmanship to his conjuring trick?

Honestly Brian, you can't really believe this stuff can you? Please tell me you're just winding us up.

I can't believe I'm in the position of feeling compelled to try to present a logical argument against this madness. It's like suddenly discovering myself inside a Dali painting.

Like your joke Wicknight - here's another:

Q. When is a contradiction not a contradiction?
A. When it's in the bible.

Zombrex

bluewolf wrote:

I don't think blue fluff is alive :eek:


(dyed! )

You should see the fluff in between my toes ... :eek:

Zombrex

BrianCalgary wrote:

So in comclusion:
Our universe in general and our planet specifically needs 4.5 Billion year old rocks in order to provide the foundation to sustain our life.

That is an illogical conclusion.

You are looking at how humans have adapted to life on 4.5 billion year old planet and gone "Wow, we need all these things to be able to live on a 4.5 billion year old planet like we do. Therefore for us to live like we do God would need to make a 4.5 billion your old planet so we have all these things"

The problem is that you are putting the horse before the cart. There is nothing to say that we have to live like this.

We live like this precisely because we have ended up on a 4.5 billion year old planet. We have adapted to the planet we find ourselves on, the planet hasn't adapted to us.

If God had created a brand new 2 day old planet and placed us on it we would have lived as someone lives on a brand new 2 day old planet.

Scofflaw

BrianCalgary wrote:

rockbeer wrote:

Can you please explain, in scientific terms, what function 4.5 billion year old rocks perform that brand new ones wouldn't handle just as well..

No I can't. Just want to know why it isn't considered as a possibility.

Essentially, because there aren't any functions that 4.5 billion year old rocks perform at all. There are no known examples - the oldest rocks, last time I looked, were the Isua gneisses in Greenland at c 3.8Gy.

BrianCalgary wrote:

rockbeer wrote:

Are you really saying god made the rocks 'appear' that old so they could contain the oil that nobody would discover for thousands of years, but that would later 'provide the foundation to sustain' our climate-wrecking, creation-destroying godless commercial-industrial lifestyles?.

No I contend that rocks that contain oil need to be that old in order to contain the oil. And that is the question I have. oil can not be made overnight, unless it is done by God. He is the only one that could do it overnight. Why not consider it as a possibility?

First, because very old rocks do not contain oil. Oil, as far as we currently know, results from the rapid burial of large quantities of plankton or plant material, and therefore the oldest "source rocks" (where petroleum originates) postdates the expansion of life on earth. Most source rocks will be 500My or younger.

Second, because God can make oil overnight, there is no point in him "pretending" that you need very old rocks to produce oil. It would be equally easy for him to make it seem that you require yellow rocks to produce oil, and far less misleading.

BrianCalgary wrote:

Scofflaw, I am so glad you talked about forensic science.

And to your point about oil scofflaw, the Bible does not give instructions in geology. A geologist studies the rock formations in order to best ascertain where the oil is, regardless of how it got there.

Hmm, no. You are assuming, as people often do, that oil prospecting hasn't moved on since the early days, where you just looked for a suitable trap structure at surface and stuck a well in it.

Petroleum geology is an interpretative science. That is to say, the geologist says "based on what we have seen so far, we think that this sandstone here is a c. 250My basal deltaic deposit , which can therefore be expected to be truncated by the c. 230My sea-level rises, in which case there is no point in drilling further out".

It is not just "ooh, here's a sandstone, great - now we just need to look for a shale bed". The dating is an intrinsic part of it, as is the evolutionary succession of organisms.

And it works - or you'd have nothing to put in your car.

BrianCalgary wrote:

Is it not a possibility that God placed it there during creation 12,000 years ago, just so that we could find it and use it as energy in our modern world.

Of course that's a possibility. It is equally possible that it was put there yesterday by Satan, along with all the 'history'. As Wicknight says, though, it's not a meaningful possibility, because there's no way in that case to distinguish what it actually is (put there by God 12,000 years ago) from what it appears to be (the result of a 4.6Gy geological history).

All we can know in that case is what God intended to appear. Since God, as you say, doesn't cover geology in the Bible, it seems ridiculous to assert that what He made things appear to be are not what they actually are, when there are other ways of interpreting Genesis!

cordially,
Scofflaw

2Scoops

Just to chime in on Brian's idea that science says God or miracles or similar are impossible...

A few people are muddying the waters by saying it does say it is impossible. This might be closer to the truth than the opposite, but I imagine it only confirms to Brian the anti-religion prejudice of science, which is not true.

Science does not and can not say God/miracles etc. are impossible. It remains open to the possibility unless it can categorically show it to be impossible, which it can't. However, in the complete absence of ANY evidence to support it, the possibility is remote. So remote as to be insignificant. Compounding the issue is the mass of evidence that is in opposition to the possibility. Not quite enough to disprove it, but enough to make it seem highly improbable.

The very nanosecond that testable evidence on the veracity of God/miracles etc. appears, it will be investigated tirelessly. If it categorically proves that they are true, every rational person, scientist, athiest whatever, will accept it. But without that proof we can only operate on probabilities. When we say impossible, please read 'highly improbable, with no supporting evidence and lots of contradictory evidence.'

rockbeer

Interesting contribution 2Scoops.

Can I also remind you, Brian, that modern science didn't start out from the position that the god hypothesis was impossible. On the contrary, as J C keeps telling us, early scientists (Western ones at least) were christian almost to a man. The likes of Galileo, Newton, Copernicus didn't set out to disprove the existence of god, quite the opposite, they were firmly rooted in a creationist tradition.

The questions they set out to answer could be summed up in the phrase "How did god do it?"

Prior to Darwin, creationism was the defacto standard explanation of our origins. Darwin didn't set out to disprove creation theory, he set out to answer questions about observed phenomena for which creation theory provided inadequate or no answers.

It was scientific discoveries in pursuit of answers to the "how did god do it" questions that led inevitably to the question "Did god do it at all?" To put it simply, what was observed was at such variance with biblical 'history' and 'science' that progressively the two could not be reconciled without major (and cataclysmic) reinterpretation of the bible.

This is why we now have arguments such as that between Wolfsbane and Excelsior in the early pages of this thread.

So, far from setting out with an anti-religious bias, the application of human reason and scientific method has led directly to the questioning and eventual discrediting of religious orthodoxy.

Yes, the very same reason you argue Jesus encourages us to make best use of.

These days it is axiomatic among scientists that god or other supernatural agents are inadequate explanations for observed phenomena, but to suppose that science somehow started out from that position is to miss the point entirely.

It is scientific exploration and discovery which has led us away from god.

Zombrex

2Scoops wrote:

A few people are muddying the waters by saying it does say it is impossible.

Not quite sure what post that refers to, but I would just clarify that I'm not saying that science claims God or miracles are impossible.

What is impossible to know is whether or not the world is as it is, or whether the world is actually something else and God has just made it look different

(ie is red fluff simply red fluff or is it blue fluff dyed red)

Ultimately this question is irrelevant to science, and as such it ignores it. Science deals with how the universe appears to be. It doesn't attempt to second guess this, since that is just that, guessing. It is impossible to determine if one is correct or not.

Brian seems to want science to consider the idea that God exists and has made everything appear differently to what it actually is. So while the Earth looks and always looks 4+ billion years old, we should consider the idea that it actually is 6,000 years old.

I'm not sure if Brian gets why such consideration is both impossible and ridiculous.

If the world looks and always looks 4+ billion years old how does one determine that it is 6,000 years old? That is by definition impossible.

What exactly does Brian want science to consider?

Brian thinks that science ignores God. And he is 100% correct, science does ignore God. But that is not because science has anything against the idea of God (in fact it seems God has something against science). It is because it is utterly impossible to determine what is and what is not "faked" by God.

There is no way science can include God in any theory or experiment because of the very fact that a universe with God in it looks exactly like a universe with God not in it.

This is the fault of the theists, not science. There was a time when God lived in the rain clouds and lightening of the world. But as science has slowly explored these areas and found that there is nothing behind these phenomena except natural processes, the theist have retreated their gods further and further away out of the reach of critical analysis or falsifiability.

It is pointless blaming science for not considering God when it is the theists themselves who have placed God so far outside of reality that he cannot ever be considered.

pinksoir

rockbeer wrote:

I can't believe I'm in the position of feeling compelled to try to present a logical argument against this madness. It's like suddenly discovering myself inside a Dali painting.

LOL. More like Escher though...

PDN

Wicknight wrote:

Brian seems to want science to consider the idea that God exists and has made everything appear differently to what it actually is. So while the Earth looks and always looks 4+ billion years old, we should consider the idea that it actually is 6,000 years old.

I'm not sure if Brian gets why such consideration is both impossible and ridiculous.

I promised myself not to get involved in this thread again ... but what Brian is referring to is known as the Omphalos Hypothesis (omphalos is Greek for 'navel', one of which Adam may or may not have possessed).

The Omphalos Hypothesis states that, if God created the world, then an appearance of age is logically inevitable. Otherwise newly created birds would have no feathers and newly created animals would have no bones or teeth (because they take longer than one day to form). Adam would have appeared to be older than one day old and, so some have argued, may have had a navel - hence the omphalos. Therefore, according to this hypothesis, everything that was created would have an appearence of age.

Now, as an impartial observer who feels no necessity to believe in either evolution or a young earth, I should point out that the Omphalos Hypothesis does not explain why God would also create fossils in the apparently aged rocks.

However, I will take the liberty of posting a quote by one of my favourite philosophers as it pertains to this hypothesis:

There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago. (Bertrand Russell)

So, it's impossible to prove it one way or the other, which means that this entire thread is probably a waste of time (which I suspect most of you have realised already).

Wicknight wrote:

There is no way science can include God in any theory or experiment because of the very fact that a universe with God in it looks exactly like a universe with God not in it.

The problem with this assertion is that none of us knows what a universe would look like without God in it, because none of us have ever seen such a universe, because no such universe exists.