• Welcome to Baptist Board, a friendly forum to discuss the Baptist Faith in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to all the features that our community has to offer.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon and God Bless!

Galileo, false dichotomies, and non-sequitur.

MartyF

Well-Known Member
I don't want to discuss this in someone else's thread because I have disagreements with both sides of the argument and I don't want anyone to assume that I necessarily agree with arguments on either side.

Too many times I've seen from the Evolutionist side of the argument, an underserved haughty and disdainful attitude followed by patronizing remarks and "education" not just here but other places as well.

First I'll bring up the example which a couple of Evolutionists on this forum brought up without realizing just how wrong they were.
KeyserSoze said:
Many scientific theories are so well-established that no new evidence is likely to alter them substantially. For example, no new evidence will demonstrate that the Earth does not orbit around the sun (heliocentric theory), or that living things are not made of cells (cell theory), that matter is not composed of atoms, or that the surface of the Earth is not divided into solid plates that have moved over geological timescales (the theory of plate tectonics). Like these other foundational scientific theories, the theory of evolution is supported by so many observations and confirming experiments that scientists are confident that the basic components of the theory will not be overturned by new evidence. However, like all scientific theories, the theory of evolution is subject to continuing refinement as new areas of science emerge or as new technologies enable observations and experiments that were not possible previously.
Deacon said:
History Lesson: Early 1600’s
The traditional common-sense interpretation:
The Earth is the center of the universe

The Charge against Galileo: “You have rendered yourself vehemently suspect of heresy, namely of having held and believed a doctrine which is false and contrary to the Sacred and Divine Scriptures, that the Sun is the centre of the world and does not move from east to west, and that the Earth moves and is not the centre of the world; and that one may hold and defend as probable an opinion after it has been declared and defined contrary to Holy Scripture.” (From church documents of Galileo’s trial, Wednesday June 22, 1633)

What was the fuss back then?

1) Common Sense: It seemed proper that the Earth was the center of the world, humans were in a central place in God’s plan.

2) Biblical Inerrancy: If the Earth moved, a whole set of biblical passages would need to be reinterpreted.

3) Christian Philosophy: Thomas Aquinas’ contribution to theology was based upon Aristotle’s philosophical foundation (logic, metaphysics, mathematics, physics, biology). If Aristotle was wrong this would affect his achievements in Christian apologetics.


  • Did science or scientific discoveries change how the bible was interpreted?
  • Did changing interpretations effect Biblical inerrancy?
  • Was the Bible inerrant when people understood the Bible to say the Earth was the center of the universe?
  • Was the Bible inerrant when it was believed that the earth moved and the Sun stood still?
Rob
For quite some time before Galileo, people assumed the that earth stood still while the rest of the universe revolved around it. This coordinate system is very useful and is still used by most people today. However, Galileo was the first to invent the telescope and with this telescope he looked at Jupiter and saw something unexpected. He saw the moons traveling around Jupiter. From this, he concluded that the Earth must revolve around the Sun and that the Sun cannot revolve around the Earth. Unfortunately, this is a non-sequitur - the premise does not imply the conclusion.

Eventually, the Humanists took up Galileo's cause as a cause celebre which they used to demonstrate how ignorant religion interfered with the clear and obvious notion that the earth revolved around the sun and not the other way around. This propaganda warped the relationship between science and religion for centuries afterwards.

In the late 19th century, Michaelson and Morley did a series of experiments assuming the heliocentric model was correct. What they found was unexpected and unexplained and was more than just the death knell to Ether. Eventually, these experiments led to Einstein's General Relativity which contradicted the heliocentric view. The gauntlet was thrown and everyone wanted Einstein to prove it. In order to prove this, Einstein made a testable prediction. Some key things about a scientific prediction are

1. The prediction must be able to prove the theory both right or wrong. If the prediction does not come true in the manner described at the time described, then the theory must be false. A prediction which can only prove a theory right or which has no time limit is not a scientific prediction, it is a prophecy.

2. The prediction must be widely announced and publicized and cannot be hidden among a horde of other journal articles or other predictions. Think Nostradamus.

3. The prediction needs to be testable by the opposition.

4. The prediction should be a repeatable event that can be tested again.

5. The other side has to agree to what they believe should be found if wrong. If they believe the same result will occur under their explanation, your prediction will prove nothing.

6. The more precise the prediction, the stronger the evidence for your model.

In all these things, Einstein knocked it out of the park. (Most Evolution predictions tend to fail on all 6 points.) Sir Frank Watson Dyson tested Einstein's theory in 1919 and found it to be true. The final death knell to the heliocentric model occurred with gravity probe B in 2004.

What General relativity showed is that it doesn't matter if one sets of the coordinate system centered on the Sun or the Earth, as either coordinate system works. A coordinate system based on the Sun revolving around the Earth is just as true as a coordinate system where the Earth revolves around the Sun. The problems with geocentricity and heliocentricity is that they considered themselves to be mutually exclusive when they are not. The conflict was a false dichotomy.

So what does this have to do with evolution.

1. Disbelief in Evolution does not mean that one does not understand science or that one does not know the "evidence" for evolution. That's a false dichotomy. Creation must be right or evolution must be right is also a false dichotomy.

2. Similarities and age of the Earth do not prove evolution. Humans are similar to homo-erectus, therefore Evolution is a non-sequitur. One does not necessarily follow from the other.

3. Evolution is a cause celebre just like Heliocentricity and will have tons of adherents who will tend to use the 99-1 rule.


Evolution has a major problem claiming things which cannot be tested. Evolutionists make predictions which "prove" Evolution if true but do nothing if not true. Their predictions are like Bible prophecies which have no time limit and vague parameters. Evolutionists won't even respond to me if I ask them to prove the most important parts of their theory - "Make a human from a non-human primate." or "Make life with carbon, nitrogen, water and minerals." Evolutionists are in love with a naming system by a botanist who went to his grave believing malaria was caused by clay. They still use most of his system and categories.

Evolution kills science by demanding dogmatic obedience instead of inquiry, hypothesis, and testing. Evolution does not involve lab experience. Alternative explanations which don't use Evolution's key words of "mutation" and "time" will be smacked down regardless of the explanation's viability. To this day, people say the flu virus "mutates" when that is an misnomer.


Breeding is a better word and stops people from thinking this mixing of RNA strands is instead some mystical spontaneous "mutation" which can't be predicted or recreated.

Evolution is the cause of mass deaths. Evolution is the way to murder humans for no good reason and sleep at night. There is not a single abortionist who doesn't fully believe in Evolution. Other Evolutionary adherents include Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, etc. One doesn't need to believe in Eugenics, one simply has to believe that humans like apes are simply animals to be discarded if there are too many or if they are problematics or no longer needed. Humans = primate is all that is needed to get a good nights sleep.
 

church mouse guy

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
Darwin was a racist and his thinking led to states such as Indiana sterilizing a lot of people a little over a 100 years ago. What Indiana did along with Darwin's blatant racism caused Germany to think that racism was scientific and good. More importantly, we now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Darwin is totally false scientifically but don't hold your breath until all of the religious adherents of Darwinism kick the bucket because the source is not so much Greek paganism as it is Hinduism of India. Satan.
 
Top