Discussions in the comment sections of many posts on this site chaotically tend toward the strange attractor of one generally off-topic issue: Why does Creation/Evolution seem correct to you? It is usually a discussion between Creationists who believe that the scientific conclusions are based on faith, and Naturalists who believe that the Scientific Method is best tool ever invented to extract sense from chaos.
In the beginning, Natural Philosophers (now called Scientists) in the West all believed in the Bible. Bishop Ussher gave the final word on the age of the universe according to the Bible in the early 1600’s, and the Church had all the answers. But then the idea emerged that one can actually test Aristotelian conclusions (purely rational and based on “what everybody knows”) with observations. Copernicus demonstrated with careful observation and applied math around 1600 that only the moon itself orbited the Earth, and all the other planets circled the Sun. The church accepted this, as a philosophical observation, irrelevant to the place of Man in the Universe. Then Galileo made a gadfly of himself by publishing popular books mocking the Pope for publicly continuing in the preaching of Geocentrism when it was clear, with the aid of a telescope, that not only did the planets orbit the sun, but that some of those planets had moons of their own. Many moons, placed where Man couldn’t even see them without modern technology.
Well, it just snowballed from there. Newton, a devout Christian, developed math in the late 17th century that accurately modeled the behavior of pretty much everything that man could observe at the time (the Laws of Motion). And those models showed how things naturally happen, without need for divine intervention. 
Then in the mid-19th century, J.C. Maxwell developed similar rules to explain electromagnetism (light, electricity, radio, etc). Discovery after discovery kept challenging the universally held beliefs in many areas. Gravity wasn’t related to nor caused by sin. Demons didn’t cause disease. The basic elements weren’t Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Air was a complex substance, but caloric and phlogiston weren’t. The planet and the universe steadily got wider and older and more complex as more and more evidence collected by true believers forced them to acknowledge that nature is as it is, and not how interpretations of the ancient texts described it.
By the 1700’s, many Christians were becoming Deists; they believed in an omnipotent Creator, but not in the meddling and insecure deity portrayed by most western religions. God as a watchmaker, who wound up the universe, and then sat back to watch it play out.
By the start of the 20th Century, there was a problem. The Universe (what we now call our galaxy) was only measured to be 100,000 light years across, yet every measure of geology pointed to many millions –hundreds of millions by some measures– of years of history on the Earth. How could the Earth be orders of magnitude older than the universe? Then came General Relativity, quasars, and the red shift. Suddenly the universe exploded out to billions of years across/old. And then quantum and then nuclear theory led to unstable isotopes being used as accurate clocks. The planet rose to billions of years old, too. When we brought samples back from the moon, they indicated the same age as Earthly rocks. Conflict resolved.
But there is still a small group of people who hold tight to the 17th century interpretation of a literal Genesis story. This movement emerged in the United States after the Scopes Trial in the 1920’s, depending on the idea that a Young Earth precludes the principle that species could have evolved; there wasn’t enough time. Odd schools of thought therefore emerge (Flood Geology, Intellignet Design, etc), that try to sound scientific, yet not actually using that methodology developed centuries ago.
We see comments saying that “old Earth” evidence is only found because the discoverers believe in it. They didn’t always. Most of the earlier and still useful evidence of the age of the Earth was found by those who didn’t initially believe in their own results. And when they did, they had to fight ridicule before the disbelieving community. It is the method that prevailed, not the authority of the discoverer. Nor are convincing arguments much good against the method. Scientists are often wrong. Very often. The scientific method records these wrong results so that they can be checked. And they are. And eventually and asymptotically, the correct ideas are refined and prevail.
Unfortunately, the public only sees the tip of the science iceberg. There are big, splashy announcements of bold ideas. Like Cold Fusion. That was a case when would-be discoverers did an end run around the method and announced to the public before their results could be independently checked. A quiet retraction was printed when the dozens of labs that should have been contacted first, demonstrated universally that the first announcement was based on a procedural error. But research continues. That they didn’t demonstrate something new does not imply that there is nothing new to be discovered.
I blame the media. Remember Halley’s comet? The previous time around, it was a gaudy show. In the 1980’s most astronomers said that it might be visible. The media covered it as the show of the century, assuming that it would be the same show. Technically, it was the same show. But this time we only had partially obstructed nosebleed seats, rather than right on the gridiron. Actual scientists knew this, but their story wasn’t newsworthy. When it turned out to be exactly what the scientists said, the public blamed the scientists for misleading them.
Science is portrayed to the public as a mixture of magic and authority. It is neither. It is a process whereby thousands of brilliant and highly trained competitors are all trying to prove each other wrong, or to come up with a new twist. After a generation or two of consistently and universally failing to prove that something is wrong, then it becomes provisionally accepted: A “theory”. Then it continues to be tested. Nothing is accepted on authority. Rarely is something revolutionary accepted within a decade of its announcement.
Einstein wasn’t correct about relativity because he was Einstein. He was correct because many experiments and observations failed to prove him wrong, and that his ideas led to other subsequently proven ideas. The same went for Newton, Maxwell, Bohr, Feynman, Hawking, and so on. Up-and-comers are always re-testing the earlier theories using newer methods. Under the sedate public image, real science is contentious and messy.
Finally, science is all about “how”. Religion or faith may cover “why”, for those who need it. The problem comes when unqualified observers (who sometimes have credentials to state otherwise) with a philosophical axe to grind revisit long-discredited arguments and claim them as new discoveries. They dun researchers for refusing to look at their “new evidence”, but neglect to review the existing literature, or to run the standard tests themselves. They just make claims that sound reasonable. Anyone who knows the history of 20th century discovery knows that common sense reasonableness does not match reality beyond the everyday scale of experience. And modern instruments measure far beyond that realm.
To (finally) sum this up. The question comes down to: Do you believe in the Scientific Method and its results, or in the principle that unless it agrees with a particular minority interpretation of The Bible, it is wrong?
Mark:
Back to our friend W.J.Bryant and his reluctance to accept evolution for humans.
How would you re-phrase the concept of all humans being made in the "image and likeness of god" and therefore in some sense having an intrinsic value? Or is it not important, should we accept that an individual can only have utilitarian value?
I remember you and Dan deciding in some other comment thread that it was OK to work on space travel to preserve the human race, even if it meant that certain other human groups would starve to death.
This question is related in my mind to that.
First the connection of the trilobite eye to flood evidence.
The more complex eye of the trilobite appears in the Cambrian explosion without traces of other even closely related trilobites with any kind of developing eyes. Trilobites with developing eyes are not found in the Cambrian, they are found in the Early Ordovician without eyes altogether, this is one way the sediments ages are categorically differentiated.
"Use it or loose it," certainly didn't apply here. The feature was apparently waning and then lost millions of years after it should have been a significant advantage to this species. Eyes appear without antecedents and then they vanish for some apparent non-adaptive reason.
“Trilobites as a whole remained constructed on the same archetypal plan defined in the earliest Cambrian, and, especially after the Early Ordovician, changes of real significance remained surprising low.”
The species' eye features seem to appear out of no where and then the supposed advantage of eyes for these older species either was never acheived by the other clades, which are not present in the earliest rocks or was lost somewhere along the way of many millons of years. Even though trilobites in general stayed fairly unchanged except for this one significant feature.
This is apparently the reverse of natural selection and apative radiation, unless the eyes had little if any significance to the creature's survival to begin with. Why would a complex optical ability appear so suddenly yet not be longer lasting than it was?
A world wide flood with the near total destruction of the earth's surface could explain how these originally complexly designed archetypes of life forms in general could have existed along side of their less complexly designed clades in different locations that were inundated and buried at fairly close time periods under varying flood conditions.
I stated you would not agree that this is evidence to you because apparent randomness in an extinct species would help explain why it became extinct to begin with. I point out the "de-evolution" over millions of years as puzzling to the principles of natural selection.
To me, it is an example of how these evidences could just as easily be used to show how a flood could explain the same fossil records, to me the second is a more scientific rationale. To you, the evidence only describes a scenario with millions of years between them. To me, the evidence decribes a catastrophic event that manifested itself in varying ways at differing locations across the earth's surface.
Not all places of the earth's surface were simply covered by water. There was catacylism after cataclyism of varying nature and proportion during this over a year long event. I believe there was at least one huge cataclysmic impact from an asteroid that triggered the start of these events.
Its amazing how the Genesis Flood is actually the best descriptive single year plus a bit more recorded anywhere in the Old Testament.
Only the life of Christ in the New Testament has more details concerning a single year's historical timeline.
I understand why the sediments are separated by millions of years by evolutionists. I also understand that this is not the only way to interpret the evidence.
Lets go back to what certitude is really all about. Something pushes the naturalist's evidence from being plausible into the realm of greater certitude. The evidence is interpreted in a chosen framework, it does not just speak for itself.
Grumpypilgrim, again I am not here to argue against your point of view, I am here to point out some of the fallacies that you employ to defend it.
First you said,
"… we don’t need the scientific method to confirm that men landed on the moon and returned safely to earth, or that a bridge we have built has not fallen down, or that the new batteries we put into our flashlight really do make it work,"
and then you said,
"… we can take at least some things at face value: people did land on the moon and return to earth because the scientific method … worked; the flashlight batteries really were bad because we used the scientific method to verify they were bad …"
Well, either we need the scientific method to verify these, or we don't.
The fact is, ANY definition of Truth carries with it some level of assumption, of "tak(ing) at least some things at face value". It is always a matter of degree and of interpretation. In many ways it is exemplified by philosophical questions like, "If dogs have four legs, and you encounter a three-legged canine, is it still a dog?" For the faithful, the evidence agrees with the Biblical description WELL ENOUGH for them to satisfy their definition of Truth. For the scientific, much more evidence is required before their definition of Truth is satisfied. And even then, it's still a judgment call. Always.
Grumpy asks:
Can you prove who physically wrote the book of Genesis and prove by what method(s) he, she or they acquired the stories it contains?
There is internal evidence (the tablet theory) that points to specific individuals (patriarchs) that did record their individual details in written form which were kept together, collated and unified by Moses into similarly constructed accounts with parallel literary forms. The phrase "these are the generations of" appears to be the division point between each successive patriarch's contributions.
The only material which is really open to non-human direct observational history is Genesis one and the start of chapter two where Adam himself would have had no direct observational physical knowledge and that material must have been given to Adam or Moses or some other patriarch by direct revelation from God himself.
I do not speak lightly when I say that Genesis 1 and 2 are potentially of the nature of collective revelation, not unlike what other religions claim to have received from sources that are beyond everyday human experience.
I'm sure Moses didn't casually put together a story and then assume God would add His blessing to it. Moses is describes as having had numerous direct supernatural interactions with the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. Moses was both a researcher and a montheist. He was trained in the schools of the Egyptians. The Hebrews would have kept their records passed along from patriarch to patriarch and Moses would also have had potentially the best of the scientific knowledge of his day at his disposal.
The most important of all documentation would have been what came directly through the flood aboard the Ark from Noah and his offspring. This is partially why the the ark of the covenant was given its name. The only reliable information concerning the preflood history of man had to have come through those who had both physical and oral histories of those events.
I believe no other history of man except the Hebrews kept the link with the preflood world in a way that could be as reliable as theirs was.
The words of Moses were also to be kept in the new "ark" to preserve the real historical content and theological point of view so it wouldn't be corrupted.
Other faiths like Islam attempt to bridge off of the Hebrew lineage, but none of them directly links together as does the Hebrew's account of Genesis. Islam claims to use Genesis but they seem to embellish and even contradict it in places.
As for the apparent ages of the mountains on North America. Rock material is rock material, either it was formed under water or it wasn't.
I hold that the Appalacians may have only been high hills before the flood or they would have formed very early on during the flood year and been eroded for next to a full year. The rocky mountains would have formed during the end of the flood year as the flood waters were receeding and large plate tectonics were under way.
Here is my second evidence for a world wide flood.
Reason 2. Marine fossils by the billions exist in rock that are far above sea level. If this were an isolated phenomenon, then one might consider that some fossils were lifted by tectonic forces from sea level to much above sea level. The preponderance of fossils all over the earth and high above sea level, however, points to a world-wide cataclysmic event, not to many individual local occurrences. Examples include higher layers of the Grand Canyon and the Himalayas.
In addition, tt is not only that marine fossils are found at high elevations all over the earth, but that all fossils of every stripe (marine and otherwise) were quickly buried. Fossils in many places around the earth show massive evidence of rapid burial. If it is not the tons of herring fossils of the Green River formation, it is the billions of nautiloids of the Redwall Limestone. If it is not dinosaur bones in close proximity to one another in North America, it is dinosaur fossils in China, Argentina, etc.
These were catastorphic events, not slow gradualism.
Karl: We don't disagree that there were both local and global cataclysms. Just that the particular one that you keep trying to affirm presents no evidence. Zero. Many cultures had 500-year floods that seemed to them to be global because it destroyed everything they knew everywhere they'd been.
Please point out where in the Noah narrative it talks about other cataclysmic characteristics that year besides rising and falling water.
If fossils were all created by a single event, why are only certain types fossils found in specific locations? Trilobites, as you brought up, exist only in one particular layer, everywhere in the world. Never in a lower layer. Never in a higher layer. Note: Lower and higher in comparison to adjacent contiguous layers, not by current altitude.
Why are no fish, mammals, birds, or reptiles ever found with trilobites or vice versa? Didn't all these creatures die at the same time and worldwide? Why did the flood kill and fossilize so many more water dwelling creatures than land animals?
You cite the Grand Canyon, but ignore the strata far above its rim, visible on the surface to the north. How does a flood explain the staggered diagonal strata below the horizontal strata near the base of the canyon? They were clearly formed, hardened, eroded, tilted, and then again buried.
<img src="http://dangerousintersection.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/geologiccrosssection_large.jpg" alt="Bryce, Zion, Grand Canyon Geologic Cross Section of the Colorado Plateau">
(Buy the Poster)
Noah's descriptions include at least these additional items in addition to 40 days and 40 nights of rain.
The only eyewitness evidence Noah witnessed was from the window of the ark or the sounds he heard. There was however a definite change in the the ground water patterns before and after the flood. Noah definitely detected a marked decrease in geothermal activity from the start of the flood to 150 days into the flood.
Upon day one the fountains of the great deep burst open. (Genesis 7:11)
These same fountains of the deep were closed off after 150 days. (Genesis 8:2)
My commentary – to know that the fountains had shut down something visible must have been witnessed, or the roughness of the ride must have smoothed out. The rains which were now not as steady as they had been for 40 days and forty nights were restrained as well.
Also a wind was present after 150 days. So a temperature difference can be seen as the natural scientific explanation for a strong wind (Genesis 8:1)
The ark comes to rest upon a mountain but other mountains are not seen for several more days as either more waters receed or as the mountains are pushed higher.
In total the flood lasted at least 371 days when Noah finally was confident that the earth was safe to walk upon and some plants had started to grow once again.
There was obvious much that happened to the earth that Noah was not an eye-witness to. Much like other geological historians, much of this we can only interject with a degree of proneness to error.
Dan asked:
If fossils were all created by a single event, why are only certain types fossils found in specific locations? Trilobites, as you brought up, exist only in one particular layer, everywhere in the world. Never in a lower layer. Never in a higher layer. Note: Lower and higher in comparison to adjacent contiguous layers, not by current altitude.
This single event had a progression of events. I believe one of the first steps was the impact at Chixculub that shattered apart the single land mass and started the near total destruction of the pre-flood world.
This first impact would have flash fried nearly everything organic along the southerly approach of the impact site and for a large distance north as well. The spray from the impact crater would have vaporized organic life leaving the trilobites and other shelled creatures with little if any other detectable organics still present. This is why the trilobites and other shelled organism are so abundant in these limestone layers. This impactor vaporized organics and turned them into salts that became limestone upon re-hydration with the waters of the flood.
btw- Lots wife not only looked back at Sodom and Gomorrah, her heart wasn't set on escaping and she couldnt bear to see the towns destroyed, she was slow in making the journey and was hit by a blast of energy that vaporized her into salt as well.
Limestone is not turned into cement unless it is recooked by tremendous temperatire to break the bonds of hydration. Once the materials are then allowed to reabsorb water they become like limestone again and can harden right back again. The minerals that have formed the purest limestone formations with fossils across the globe must have had there beginning in tremendous heat and then subsequent rehydration and either rapid or more gradual depositions. Fossils require rapid depositions.
As for the Grand Canyon's tilted layers. I believe most of the formation of the Grand Canyon was actually from the tremendous drainage while the sediments were still water ladden. This would mean that the canyon once at a boundary between the ocean and the land mass it was draining.
There are canyons similar to it at the end of the other large rivers where these rivers meet the ocean. Most of this erosion is into the continental shelfs. This would mean that this region was once at the boundary of the ocean and the land during the latter stages of the flood.
Once the majority of the sediments had been washed away and then started to harden its a wonder that more of the land didn't shift than just these sections. Materials with water dissolved in them do change density when the water is drained from them and they further compact and harden into positions Pressures on the land masses must have been unequal as the waters steadily both eroded and dropped in elevation.
Edgar observes, "The fact is, ANY definition of Truth carries with it some level of assumption, of “tak(ing) at least some things at face value”. It is always a matter of degree and of interpretation."
I would take this observation one step further. Consider the flashlight battery example we previously discussed. My flashlight doesn't work, so I replace the batteries and discover that the flashlight now works. However, as you mentioned, my flashlight might have had some other problem that 'fixed itself' when I replaced the batteries. Accordingly, I want to check to see if the batteries really are bad. So, I put the batteries into another (previously working) flashlight and observe that the batteries don't work in that flashlight, either. Then, I put the batteries into another (previously working) device, and find that the batteries still don't work. Then I measure the voltage on the batteries using my trusty (?) digital multimeter, and find that the batteries show voltages that are far below normal. I would argue that, at some point, I have performed so many tests on the batteries that by far the most rational explanation for my flashlight to not work is that the batteries are dead. This doesn't mean the flashlight doesn't have a flakey switch, merely that I have found the most rational cause of its failure to work.
Karl writes, "I do not speak lightly when I say that Genesis 1 and 2 are potentially of the nature of collective revelation, not unlike what other religions claim to have received from sources that are beyond everyday human experience."
Ah, so, the stories in Genesis upon which you put your faith, and from which you denounce all of evolutionary science, are stories written by people entirely unknown to you — people who have unknown intelligence, unknown mental stability and unknown gullibility. Indeed, for all you know, they might have been superstitious pagans, or village idiots, or teenagers stoned out of their minds on hallucinogenic mushrooms, or merely popular storytellers who entertained their village neighbors with tales of fanciful fiction.
So what does the broken flashlight have to do with naturalists explanations of geological history?
Problem identification is a key component of doing applied science.
Do naturalists really think they are solving the riddles of the past by their interpretations of materials present today?
Thinking you've fixed a flashlight that was broken in the past can't be done in the present. You may beleive you can come to the rescue of that broken flashlight in the past, but unless the present operation of flashlight presumes that flashlights have always been built under the same principles, with the same design and patterns and that the reason for knowing the purpose and functioning of the device meant the thing was actually broken in the past and that it was in need of being rescued from its nonfunctioning status. Did broken mean the same thing then as it does now?
Of course energy is needed to make a light shine. What am I missing?
Karl: Please review a high school chemistry for the difference between concrete and quicklime. Learn the physical effect on complex crystalline structures (such as shells) of quickly heating them to the lime sublimation point. Hint: They explode, losing most of their original shape. Now try it on a freshly killed shellfish (even more destructive).
Visit a crematorium to discuss the effect of heat on a human body, and the way that a heat-dehydrated body actually looks. Hint: Nothing like a pillar of salt.
Then review elementary fluid dynamics to remember the uniformity of pressure under a layer of fluid such as water. Also consider the differential shear behavior under fluid flow of a suspension (like new sediment layers) and dry matrix (like hardened sedimentary rocks).
Please demonstrate how a single deluge situation creates distinct layers of alternating densities (not sorted by weight or size), then tilts some of them, cracking and sliding them with sharp boundaries, then erodes their edges, then adds more layers of alternating densities, and then cuts narrow channels through the soft sludge, then elevates parts of this wet mass thousands of feet without it running downhill.
Then you may know why we laugh at your last response. Note: None of these detractions assumes anything about the age of the Earth.
Grumpy seems to think that Genesis 1 and 2 qualify as the work of the village idiots.
I do not have to place unwarranted faith in assumptions of billions of year of meaningless purpose to life.
I don't need to know exactly how Adam passed along his information to Seth who passed his along to Noah who passed it along eventually to Abraham, Issac and Jacob who brought the material to Egypt where it was all eventually included in Moses compliation.
All you are concerned about is how the special revelation concerning Genesis 1 and 2 got approved by Moses as the authorized edition. I can't answer you that one, but I'll stand by my belief that it gets the picture more closely than the theory of evolution does when it attemts to leave out
at bear minumum the principles of intelligent design.
Grumpy is entitled to his opinion. I'm entitled to mine.
There is the difference between someone with a flair for authoritative pronouncements and one who states where his bias lies and what bias he chooses to hang his thought process upon. There are issues of origins that will never be answered by science, I accept that and choose what is the most historical and philosophically in line with my thought process.
Sorry grumpy but you won't get me to start preaching at you like Eric did.
Grumpy sounds a little bit like an authoritarian who likes to point out what others have already said about themselves. I've admitted where what I believe can't be proven either historically or scientifically, but I can live with the consequences of being wrong, that's built into my worldview already. I will contuniue to believe that I can have faith in these two chapters because the rest of the Bible fits my worldview just fine.
And, oh by the way. Evolution's historical evidence is on more shifting ground than the first two chapters of Genesis are scientifically.
Evolution has evolved to the point where there is no point to discussing if it has any meaning for anyone but the atheist anyway. Even the theistic evolutionist are being mowed over by the atheistic naturalists.
Dan,
Sorry for the misuse of the word concrete, I was thinking cement.
I didn't indicate that all of the materials were flashed to the sublimation point, although many of them must have been to create such amounts of limestone. The further one gets from the actual crater of chicxulub the more the heat would have been dissapated and the materials wouldn;t have all been flashed.
At Nagasaki and Hiroshima all that was left of some of the people were outlines of salts plastered to objects, people as well as trees and others objects can be turned to salts
Back to the composition of the human body after the carbon content is heated and combusted away.
Cremation destroys all DNA. So all record of your individuality has gone up the chimney. Not much to be resurrected from now. According to Gayle E. O'Neill, Ph.d. of TEI Analytical, Inc., your post cremation chemical composition will be:
Phosphate 47.5%
Calcium 25.3%
Sulfate 11.00%
Potassium 3.69%
Sodium 1.12%
Chloride 1.00%
Silica 0.9%
Aluminum oxide 0.72%
And the list goes on:
Magnesium 0.418%
Iron Oxide 0.118%
Plus Zinc,Titanium Oxide, Barium, Antimony, Chromium, Copper, Manganese, Lead, Tin, and Vanadium in much smaller quantities. Beryllium and Mercury will be present in minute quantities
While a flash event will most likely also leave some carbon around, the basic ingedients of most ashes would make good materials for many basic types of cement or limestones themselves.
Grumpypilgrim wrote: "I would argue that, at some point, I have performed so many tests … that I have found the most rational cause …"
(With apologies for trimming the context of your statement so severely.) Exactly! Searching for absolute truth is like the proverbial "proving the negative" — it must cover all of the infinite number of possibilities. At some point one must simply say, "There is enough agreement with the hypothesis to conclude that it is essentially correct. Outliers must be accommodated by some other means." In the scientific method, those outliers are accommodated by eventual modifications to the hypothesis. Sometimes this means abandoning the hypothesis altogether. In the Biblical view, however, the outliers are simply ignored.
Karl: Cement is still more than quicklime. The shadows of Hiroshima are not caused by salt driven from the bodies (look it up). Calcium carbonate is in all natural water everywhere, all the time. When the water dries (or the pH rises), limestone forms. Look in an old water pipe. Visit a cave. See a geyser. Another way to produce it is by living things sequestering it from the water: Shells, coral, and bone.
One does not need to postulate boiling away the entire ocean in order to heat up sea creatures to the sublimation point to produce local limestone, while a wooden boat nearby is unaffected.
Yes, bodies contain salts. A few percent (5%, 7%?) of your mass is salt, in the chemical sense. As you posted, about one percent of that few percent is the kind of salt found in those evocative pillars around the dead sea. And any flash that could quickly vaporize a body to nothing but salt would instantly spread it widely. See Hiroshima.
The only evidence against evolution is "I don't believe in it". The evidence for it fills warehouses, universities, and museums in most cities in most countries, and is still very available in the wild for the thousands of researchers who are diligently trying to find any chink in the now very well proven theory. Find a flaw in Evolution, get a Nobel Prize! There is no reason to hush it up.
In science theory must fit the facts, not vice-versa.
Evolutionary theory (in its many forms and details) came to be prominent in spite of strong opposition by the entire scientific community, as well as the clergy. Now, it is accepted by the entire scientific community, and the vast majority of clergy. This is not because the minority of scientists who are atheists somehow strong-armed society into accepting the theory. It is because the theory is the best fit to the facts. All the facts. Note: A story in a book is not considered a fact.
I have one question for Karl: why is it so damn objectionable to believe that the Bible isn't accurate on points like this? What is so heinously wrong with the idea of a very old Earth in an older universe? Despite your admittedly valiant, clever, and supremely reasonable attempts to refit evidence to match Genesis, the fossil record does not support your conclusions (fossilization itself takes too long to fit the time frame, among other factors) nor does the distance between stars make sense in a young universe unless you're willing to attribute Coyote the Trickster attributes to Yahweh.
But just why is it so objectionable to assume, for the sake of argument, that there is a god that created the universe, but did it in a manner that the writers of Genesis could not possibly have imagined? What actually changes? Does it make you and less you? Me any less me? The universe any less what it is?
For the record, I think you are drawing erroneous conclusions, mainly because you'd prefer it to be the way you describe. I've been swayed by the evidence, which really doesn't support a 6000 year old universe.
But I am curious about the psychology.
(Feel free to tell me to bugger off if you don't wish to discuss.)
I repeat myself. Even the theistic evolutionists are being mowed over by the atheistic naturalists.
Dan states:
Evolutionary theory (in its many forms and details) came to be prominent in spite of strong opposition by the entire scientific community, as well as the clergy. Now, it is accepted by the entire scientific community, and the vast majority of clergy. This is not because the minority of scientists who are atheists somehow strong-armed society into accepting the theory. It is because the theory is the best fit to the facts.
You yourself admit that the minority of scientists are atheists – why?
I have direct contact daily with many scientists and clergy with advanced degrees and many with strong theological backgrounds who do not fit your characterization. When will a little courtesy ever be paid to people that don't think the same as you. When will you ever allow someone to be allowed to discuss an issue without using logical fallacies to insult people and to try to strong arm others to your way of thinking. That may have happened to you by some scientist who claimed that to think otherwise was foolishness and flat out stupid.
I like nature. I like science. I like people. I don't think either of these needs to insult the other in what is clearly a matter of belief or faith in either regard.
The Biblical writing called Revelation is full of seemingly supernatural (Off the wall mushroom variety to you) mind boggling events, stuff you would say is very unscientific. None the less it is full of philosophical value and spiritual insight.
One of these events is the description of two witnesses who will be slain for a while and then come back to life. Even though they appear to be people, they are probably not. There have been two avenues ever since the dawn of time for how people have come to realize that a creator exists outside of themselves. There are two witnesses to the mind and heart of man that there is a God and that He can be known to one degree or another.
These two witnesses have been called general revelation (through nature and creation) and special revelation (direct interactions by God with individuals).
As you can plainly see these two avenues are being silenced more and more everyday by those who claim God does not exist. Scientists should not be astonished by what results to the human condition when it studies nature as though it is here for no reason besides itself. When one doesn't care about the emotional well being of people they can use all manner of twisted logic to rationalize nearly anything, even murder and infanticide.
Both of these avenues of witness have been overshadowed in the past 100 years by the atheists who want more and more to silence the connection between nature and a creator. Anything that can be done to discredit either of these two witnesses is what the atheists is after. Read the real push behind the scopes trial and the venomous attitudes towards the idea of a creator.
People fail to recognize that if these two witnwesses who are being silenced more and more by the university secularists think they can defeat them they are barking up the wrong tree. Just like Jesus, they will not stay dead but will come back to life. All bets are off when it comes to how this struggle between worldviews will end.
Mark states:
For the record, I think you are drawing erroneous conclusions, mainly because you’d prefer it to be the way you describe. I’ve been swayed by the evidence, which really doesn’t support a 6000 year old universe.
But I am curious about the psychology.
Mark you either have leanings towards being a theistic evolutionist or perhaps an agnostic or an atheist I can't really tell which from the message you sent. It doesn't really matter all that much too me. Glad to know you want to discuss my thought process as opposed to the interpretation of the facts themselves.
First I never said I believe the earth is 6000 years old. I do not think the days of creation are neccessarily six literal earth days. Each could have been up to a thousand earth years in each of the creation days. Scripture does state elsewhere that a day with the Lord is as a thousand years.
13,000 years for the start of creation is not beyond a reasonable interpretation of the Bible, however the religious nature of man and recorded history does come into the picture only 6,000 to 7,000 years ago.
This evidence matches very strongly with archeological data.
What kinds of animals God was creating on day six before he made man in His own image can't really be determined from scripture. But on day six man was a special creative act apart from the animals.
Psychologically, I try to weigh actual hard evidence (Observable, measureable and repeatable) verses any pronounced correct interpretations (including apparent calculated data) that fits potential models concerning what the actual evidence may reasonably infer.
As I stated over in the certainty article, I try to be honest and evaluate most statements that come my way to see what kind of mental construct it claims to be. Then I evaluate it accordingly. I know my mind is subjective and that it choses either consciously or unconsciously what it will believe about these matters. Evidence that claims to be objective and therefore "better" because of it is often not aware of the value added component that enabled the individual to be swayed by the evidence.
Being swayed by evidence must have meant you didn't use to think about these matters as you do know.
Edgar observes, "In the Biblical view, however, the outliers are simply ignored."
Based on what I've seen of the Biblical view, I would argue that it's the other way around: in the Biblical view, the outliers form the central core doctrine, while the overwhelming bulk of rational evidence is simply ignored.
There is that term again.
"Overwhelming" bulk of rational evidence.
If the evidence were undebatable statments that could only mean one thing then I would be fool to think there could be possible alternate explanation.
Something pushed the perspective over the brink for you, not for me.
Karl writes:—"Being swayed by evidence must have meant you didn’t use to think about these matters as you do know."
It seems to me a person goes through stages in life, the first of which is that of total acceptance of what authority figures tell you. Presumably, there follows rebellion—adolescence, hormone-driven contrariness just for the sake of contrariness. Then either a reacceptance of authority (which some call "maturity") or an embrace of skepticism.
At one time I was a christian. Very profoundly. Some of the rules made no sense to me, either because I simply didn't want to follow them or because, having been raised in a house where swallowing things without proper consideration led to raging arguments over dinner, they really didn't add up. Being an avid reader since the age of nine, my rebellious period included an intellectualism absent in most of my peers at the time— no real reflection on their potential, they were just part of a culture that undervalues education and rationality. By the time I entered my early 20s I'd started paring away at my christian beliefs and found them largely wonting, especially those aspects which made statements about the nature of the physical world.
I'm a science fiction writer. I've always had an interest in science, but when I decided to pursue that path I dug into it fairly deeply. In some matters, it is a difficult tool to wield, but worthwhile. Combined with a love of history, I pretty much came to a point of discounting almost 9/10s of the Bible.
In the interest of brevity, let me just say that while I enjoy a spirited discourse of differing opinions, there comes a point at which it is clear that my opponent may no longer be arguing from the same place I am and therefore the conclusions being drawn—by him or me—are hopelessly out of synch.
13,000 years? How gracious. Far too short a span to account for geological features which Dan has rather painstakingly pointed out. But it also would not account for the fact that our galaxy is 100,000 light years across. Even if, as might be suggest, it was all created, as it were, in situ, it would still take fifty plus thousand years for the light from some of those stars to reach us. That doesn't even account for the distance to the Andromeda Galaxy, which is almost three million light years away.
Now, if you allow for the time suggested by these distances, at what point do you draw the line and claim that things are "this old" and no older? Especially when we now have visual evidence (through Hubble among other sources) of galaxies tens of billions of light years away?
I have become convinced by the evolutionary models in conjunction with these astronomical models that the science which strongly denies (not disproves, mind you) the notion of Intelligent Design has a better claim on our consideration than the folklore from a 3500 year old collection of local stories.
Just to answer your question about the source of my changed thinking. Dan has been doing a fine job of demonstrating the flaws in your science and I'll leave it to him.
But thank you for your frankness in answering my question.
Mark,
Thanks for your comments. The apparent evidence for the age of the universe is somewhat distinct from the evidence for a young earth.
I'll discuss that in the next few weeks as I have time.
The division between the ages of the Earth and the Universe has caused consternation in the world of science. In the early 20th century, the world appeared to over a hundred million years old, yet the universe (as it was then understood) could barely clock in at a million on the outside estimate. Some astronomers held that it was as young as tens of thousands of years old, based on the diameter of the milky way.
Then came Einstein and Hubble and that lot, who expanded the universe by several orders of magnitude using red shift (and related observations). Meanwhile, the Earth only gained in age by about an order, when isotopic dating entered the mix. Multicellular life still only goes back a few hundred million years, by every estimate backed by data.