Science versus Religion

Or the universe IS actually billions of years old.

 

NEWS FLASH!!!

Not all Christians are "Young Earthers". Because one accepts the age of the universe doesn't make one an atheist. Major logical miscue here.

It seems some of you are totally unaware that there one can be a Christian and not:
1. Believe in a 6000 year old earth
2. Believe biological evolution is untrue
3. Be a right-wing political extremist
4. Think that homosexuality is a sin above all sins
5. Believe in the death penalty
6. Be a fundamentalist

and on and on and on

 

You're running beyond what I said. I understand the temptation to do so; this topic cannot be discussed in a controlled manner, which was the point of my OP.

I wrote earlier "if God did create Adam last week, then science is helpless to demonstrate it." I hope that you would, upon reflection, agree with that statement. Science deals with what is observable and it interprets the observed data according to many assumptions (most of which are not debated by anyone). If a scientist sees a man, he assumes that the man is the age he appears to be. But if God created that man last week, the scientist's assumption will be incorrect.

But God has not lied, as you have claimed, by creating a full-grown man. And it is not trickery through false evidence, as NPC claimed.

If (notice that I always have said "if") God creates something, that thing will, of necessity, look older than it is, even if it only looks one second older than it is. This is a philosophical fact because everything that is "here" looks like it got "here" by natural processes, which require time to occur.

This fact does not automatically explain any particular datum which you appeal to as proof of the old-universe position. Certainly, in many cases, it would be nothing more than a lame ignoring of the data to invoke this fact.

But it is a fact nonetheless, and it is a fact which science is powerless to interact with; not because of a failure in science, but because science deals with other things.

 

Remember those two old theories on how the Pyramids were built? Then, once the two were combined to form a agreeable model? How is that impossible to come about with the Creation model? If I recall, the theories are

6000 years, or
6 days of creating everything at their peak of their maturity

---the problem I'm having with either theory is that the 6000 model, taken from Peter I guess, isn't accurate to who God is at all. That passage is akin to poetry of God from the Psalms, the real deal is too grand to concieve. The latter theory sounds like a good scapegoat to getting out of an argument, and not getting into arguments and just obeying is always better, but there's one thing missing. The concept of time to Man for the most part is the amount things are closer to dieing. Death didn't exist in God's creation until the fall of man, so you can also basically say Time still didn't exist during the peroid of Creation to the 'origional sin.' At that point everything got cursed with the element of decay, and that's as far back as we can go with the Earths and the Universes age. The 'days' can now be easily explained to mean that God made everything in a certain order within even intervals between each creation i.e.: Man was made just as fast as the universe and "light" were made. It now doesn't matter anymore how long God took to do these things, it's miraculous enough that he made somethin out of nothing---he even made time and force out of nothing, and he had all the 'time' to plan and make it, since he works outside its dimension anyway. I don't think however evolution was used as a method to create; it rather was a blessing to us as a necessary survival function after God cursed us to Die and Return to the dust; beacuse without it we would have no other refuge from dieing and nothing would be here today.

 

Not really, no - can you explain it?

 

True science, or at least that which is true in science must agree fully with the Bible or God is not inerrant. And God is inerrant.

 

If that were true, we wouldn't have any science, since science is in the business of overturning old presuppostions and beliefs.

No, but there are objective ways to interpret data so one does not fool one's self. There is an entire discipline dedicated to this.

It works, too. It's why scientists are able to deal with such problems.

"Be sure not to fool yourself. And you're the easiest one to fool."[/i[
Richard Feynmann

 

Smoke that pipe . . .

 

Last Thursdayism is mocking version of omphalism which is what is being proposed here.

 

Again, another of man's limitation to truely comprehending God. Time like gravity or mass is a tool of man, not God. God is eternal which holds that time has no influence (Rev 10:6h). If one incorrectly dates what God has made, the mistake or falsenness is in the dating and not in the creator or what he created. The creator and when he created are true and real in this equation and have no way to be false or wrong.

If we say God made a man to appear to be 30 years old, the absolutes are God made a man. The mistake or falseness is in the interpretation of his appearance which has nothing to do with the creators actions.

The problem with science is it says show me, show me, show me and I'll believe it.
God says believe me, believe me, believe me and I'll show you...

 

You are incorrect. No one has yet proposed omphalism. Its problems are obvious and it contradicts the scriptural view of God and things. I have stated a fact: if God creates something, it will look like it was here before. You cannot deny it, for it is self-evident.

Now, since it is undeniable, it carries with it certain implications. One of them is this: if God spoke the world into existence, science cannot analyze that fact. Science is powerless to analyze that fact. An analysis of starlight cannot confirm or disprove that God spoke the starlight into existence, although the "hypothesis" entails certain evidential problems. All theories of origins have unanswered problems.

All tht can be done is to ridicule the protasis "if God spoke the world into existence." I, with you, would ridicule "last Thursdayism." But I do not consider the biblical statement "the worlds were framed by the word of God" to be ridiculous, and I hope you don't, either.

 

I'm glad you recognize this.

I definitely agree that science cannot answer the question of whether God spoke to initiate the cascade of events or "Big Bang" the universe into existence and continued to speak things into existence after that initiation event. I believe that what we observe through science about origins attempts to imperfectly analyze the processes that God created.

I definitely agree by faith that God spoke us into existence and that is not a ridiculous statement.

 

Am I understanding you correctly that while you believe omphalos theology is incorrect, you are saying that if it was correct, it is beyond the scope of science to determine this? I would agree with that.

 

If you acknowledge that most scientists aren't atheists, why do you frame Creationism vs. Evolution in terms of fundamentalists vs. fundamentalists? Isn't it more accurately characterized as fundamentalists vs. scientists?

 

Y'know, npc, I'd like to address that very question. Problem is, I don't understand it at all.

Remember, I'm a fundamentalist. Type more slowly and use easier words.

And explain a little more.

 

On my way out the door for work this morning, I wrote too hastily concerning omphalism. Some of it inheres in the fact that I'm defending. I do believe that God created the universe as a functioning whole, even as he created man thus. But what little I know of omphalism as a distinct set of ideas, or its original form as first propounded, seems to include indefensible ideas and, as others have alleged, God creating false evidence.

But in truth, I've avoided stating a developed position regarding origins (until the paragraph above), and I've avoided it for the reason alluded to in my first post: it's a hopeless topic. When I was just a little fundamentalist, I might have enjoyed tying the tails of two cats together and throwing them over the clothesline; but that stuff bores me now. When it's hopeless, it's pointless; and the creation-evolution debate is hopeless.

I try, then, to deal with some small element in such an issue, a small element for which there is some hope of respectful conversation. In this thread, I've tried to make one undebatable point and to draw from it one debatable inference. My "undebatable" point is that anything that has been just created looks as though it has been here longer than that. The inference that can be debated (although I think that the truth in the matter lies with me) is that science is powerless to establish that something was not spoken into existence.

"Last Thursdayism" is ridiculous because there is no reason to believe it. But that God spoke the world into existence is a claim that is repeated over and over and over in the Bible. Therefore it cannot be dismissed with ridicule. It is only ridiculous to an atheist or some kind of deist who denies that God interacted with the material world after the initial creation of some amorphous primordial stuff.

So, if ridicule is ruled out by the nature of the case, it seems to me that the next question might be "what would the universe look like if God had spoken it into existence over the course of six 24-hour days?" Folks could go 'round and 'round with that question, and it is one which I am incapable of discussing in any depth. but allowing a personal God into the equation sets things on a very different plane than that of atheistic scientism.

But I agree that false evidence would be inconsistent with the character of God. I suspect, however, that we evidence-evaluators ain't nearly so smart as we think we are.

 

It was a sincere question; if I've mischaracterized something perhaps you will explain what? I'll point I've never called anyone's words "pedestrian".

I also have another question. If God creates an adult then I agree that he'll look like he's been around since before he was created. But isn't that different from creating a world to host life, and then creating light that looks like it's coming from sources several billion light-years away?