[D0n]

The stated date is always from within Earth's frame of reference . . . relativity doesn't come into the question beyond nanosecond variations on the planet due to differences in elevation, etc.




One can be certain this planet has gone around the sun a few billion times, any informed person can safely say that.

actually the story of Genises in the Bible DOES make sense scientifically IF you allow for the time difference and assume God's time zone is different than ours.

ever see an explosion? a big bang you'd see the flash first before seeing the shock waves, flying debris and sounds...
Genesis says "let there be light" God created (didn't actually specify how) the universe the stars the earth it all is actually in the same order as you'd expect from the big bang theory...

the skies, the land the plants and animals then man... actually fits the order of events as describes in evolution theory..

the two theories of evolution and creationism ACTUALLY do reconcile if one accepts two simple facts:
Science is part right part wrong, the Bible is also part right part wrong.
When you look for the commonalities, you realize BOTH theories have their fallibility in the way the facts are interpreted by the writers/translators and readers... if you accept that God = Energy then BOTH theories can reconcile thier differences..

[wildman]

Looking objectively at other religion's views on creation can be very enlightening.

I agree completely - so long as it is not taught as science nor as a replacement for science.

SCIENCE:
Study of the physical and natural world using theoretical models and based on empirical verifiable data from experiments and/or direct or indirect observation.

BTW 6000 normal earth years works out to approximately 180 human generations since the "creation" of earth. If true this makes most of the findings of modern medicine impossible especially genetics. One or the other is essentially true but not both.

[D0n]

science is about observing the facts and collecting the data AND INTERPRETING it. there is tonnes of room for error, and the fact is over 80% of the population belong to one of the three aramaic religions and over 90% of the population believes in a God of some sort.
Clearly the observations of all those people count as "evidence" that they see or feel something.
Our human intelligence and the numbers indicate that if there is no God there certainly IS an evolutionary advantage to having the belief in God, the numbers clearly bear that out.

since athiests who are a religious group in thier own right, do NOT score higher across the iq range than thier creationist counterparts there is no evidence to support thier belief that they are somehow smarter, or more correct than people of other religions...

you have to ignore a lot of evidence to conclude the majority is wrong. THAT is just bad science... JUNK SCIENCE.

[MRRiley]

you ignore the science that proves a clock on sattelight above the earth keeps time differently than a similar clock here on earth yet thinking your child like comprehension of how to tell time gives you the right to put down others belief systems based on your ignorance?

if God created the universe, then he was outside the universe while it was being created. you here on earth, would have no means to asses how much time has passed relative to God's position.

go read up on how the speed in orbit affects time on the ISS and you'll (hopefully) figure out my remarks.. or maybe not...

Don,

Exactly where did I ignore that fact? I'm completely aware that clocks work at different rates in relation to the velocity of each in relation to the other as well as their location in, or proximity to a strong gravity well. Greater distance from a strong gravity well speeds a clock up, partially offsetting the slow down that can be attributed to relativistic velocity. Contrary to what you may think, this actually provides empirical evidence of the validity of science's basic understanding of the nature of time. It is also why clocks on our most distant spacecraft (Voyager's 1 & 2) will likely have to be re-calibrated to "earth time" at some point I cannot find the exact figure, but I would be surprised however if even Voyager 1's clock was off by more than a second or 2 since launch in comparison to the mission clock as JPL

What is important in the measurement of time is a constant (relatively) frame of reference. JPLs clock on Earth is Voyager's frame of reference.

The question of "how old is the earth?" when asked by human beings inhabiting the Earth (or near Earth space) must logically use the Earth itself as a frame of reference... not that of some mythical deity "outside of the universe." Frankly asking how much time has passed for "god" since he/she/they/it created the universe is nonsensical, because we cannot define or fix the "frame of reference."

For a more complete scientific explanation, check out Time dilation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

---

Last edited by MRRiley; 11-27-2012 at 07:33 AM.

[MRRiley]

science is about observing the facts and collecting the data AND INTERPRETING it. there is tonnes of room for error, and the fact is over 80% of the population belong to one of the three aramaic religions and over 90% of the population believes in a God of some sort.
Clearly the observations of all those people count as "evidence" that they see or feel something.
Our human intelligence and the numbers indicate that if there is no God there certainly IS an evolutionary advantage to having the belief in God, the numbers clearly bear that out.

since athiests who are a religious group in thier own right, do NOT score higher across the iq range than thier creationist counterparts there is no evidence to support thier belief that they are somehow smarter, or more correct than people of other religions...

you have to ignore a lot of evidence to conclude the majority is wrong. THAT is just bad science... JUNK SCIENCE.

In 1492 a sizable majority of the world's population believed very strongly that the world was flat. One man proved them wrong. Just because 80% (not sure that figure is actually correct) of the world's population is superstitious is not "evidence" that they are right. It IS evidence that we still have a long way to go in dispelling primitive beliefs in god or gods.

A scientist relies upon repeatable and consistent results... a deist relies upon emotion and fear as well as a conviction that his belief system is the one true way (otherwise he would be following a different religion).

I will admit that historically a belief in deities has possibly provided some advantage to the human race, but I would suggest those advantages would be found in the ability of "religion" to unite human beings to a "common cause" rather than any benefit directly attributable to the deities themselves. In this we can surmise that rather than the gods creating men, the gods themselves were created by men to institute a measure or sense of control over their fellow beings and their environment.

p.s. Agnostism (uncertainty as to the existence of any/all deities) can be argued to be a "religion" since it admits the possibility of supernatural deities. However, atheism is NOT a religion and cannot be classed as such because by it's nature it denies the existence of supernatural deities.

[Nesster]

Why is it even relevant how old the earth is according to a Florida senator?

They need to start focusing more on learning how to hold a fair election in Florida than worrying about the age of the earth. It makes no difference whatsoever anyway. Jim Greer, Ex-Florida GOP Chair, Claims Republican Voting Laws Focused On Suppression, Racism

You elected them.

Jason

Jason, maybe it is important: for clearly it can't take Florida longer to count votes than the Earth has existed.

[Ratmagiclady]

science is about observing the facts and collecting the data AND INTERPRETING it. there is tonnes of room for error, and the fact is over 80% of the population belong to one of the three aramaic religions and over 90% of the population believes in a God of some sort.
Clearly the observations of all those people count as "evidence" that they see or feel something.

Actually, that's nowhere near the percentage of the world's population belonging to Abrahamic religions, (Aramaic is a small language subgroup local to Palestine at the time. ) Actually, if you add up the Eastern and indigenous religions, compare to all the Abrahamic ones, I forget the figures, but it's closer to even, more like 60/40 in one direction or the other.

I think you're quoting what some claim about the *United States,* a lot of which comes from polling that's asked in terms of 'Do you believe in God or Not?' (often with varying 'inclusive' definitions of that, which are then used to claim that everyone in the poll answering that way meant 'The Christian God' )

Just in the US, a growing number of people (well aside from atheists and minority religions) are considering themselves spiritual-not-relgious or unaffiliated with any religion in particular, which is approaching the second-largest individual group in the US. (This on the scale of like 'Catholic' or 'Baptist' categories.)



In any event, this thread started off defending someone not 'observing the facts and collecting data,'
but claiming a small scientific uncertaintly, (A few hundred million years out of several billion, which is a much smaller uncertainty than you can claim means 'Oh, it might be orders of magnitude younger in spite of all evidence,'


...Much like other forms of 'Creation Science,' these are arguments from ignorance, really, and claims that we know less than we do know about the physical world: it can be like saying "Bob's not exactly sure he can park his boat in the garage, therefore it might be the Queen Mary."

Statistical uncertainty is one thing too much 'Creation Science' teaches people to *willfully not understand.*


And often draw whatever conclusion they may care to out of polling data from polls that I can tell you first hand pretty much unfailingly try to sort different beliefs into terms that are read 'Abrahamic God Or Atheist.' (When certain people want to claim overwhelming numbers at the moment, that is. They also like to claim to be a teeny minority of say 'Real Christians' when they want to blame society's problems on anything but the dominant and over-represented religious culture.)

Our human intelligence and the numbers indicate that if there is no God there certainly IS an evolutionary advantage to having the belief in God, the numbers clearly bear that out.

Not actually, especially if you go right to crediting *your* idea of *your* God, as well as a belief that 'more numbers are always better evolutionarily.' Which of itself is often tragically untrue: more numbers than the land can support aren't an advantage.

Don't get me wrong, being a theist, myself. It's just you're making tons of sorting errors and claiming more of 'absolute' conclusions than you'll take from relatively-tiny uncertainties in huge bodies of physical evidence regarding things like the age of the Earth, the state of the climate, etc etc.

If you're being a young Earth Creationist, you might think that the history of human evolution's supposed to have started with when your Bible starts relating 'history' but that's orders of magnitude off of how long human evolution documentably actually took.

since athiests who are a religious group in thier own right, do NOT score higher across the iq range than thier creationist counterparts there is no evidence to support thier belief that they are somehow smarter, or more correct than people of other religions...

you have to ignore a lot of evidence to conclude the majority is wrong. THAT is just bad science... JUNK SCIENCE.

Having a high IQ, or as a group on average being average, (Wherever you're getting those figures, actually) doesnt' mean 'the majority I claim must be 'right' about what I say they say.' ...one can keep a lot of native intelligence well-occupied, for instance, by rationalizing denial, or processing 'facts' which they're disinformed about, thinking in excruciating detail about the fictional exploits of the Starship Enterprise, or even by trying to make sense of a 'controversy' without understanding statistics.

It's a long way to spin someone thinking the age of the planet might as well be 6000 years when we've got aritfacts older than that, into claiming the entire body of science and observation is the thing that's 'JUNK SCIENCE.'

You could use your IQ for that, or for disinforming a lot of people who aren't paying attention, but that doesn't make it correct, or factual.

Never mind 'spritiually-authoritative' or even 'A responsible basis to run national policy on.'


(Also, just on the Hindu beliefs, there, that figure that can get up into trillions is actually describing the age of the whole *universe,* counting recurring creations and destructions. )

[les3547]

Jason, maybe it is important: for clearly it can't take Florida longer to count votes than the Earth has existed.

Perhaps gravity is exceptionally strong in Florida (thus slowing down their clocks in relation to the rest of the US).

[les3547]

actually the story of Genises in the Bible DOES make sense scientifically IF you allow for the time difference and assume God's time zone is different than ours.

ever see an explosion? a big bang you'd see the flash first before seeing the shock waves, flying debris and sounds...
Genesis says "let there be light" God created (didn't actually specify how) the universe the stars the earth it all is actually in the same order as you'd expect from the big bang theory...

the skies, the land the plants and animals then man... actually fits the order of events as describes in evolution theory..

the two theories of evolution and creationism ACTUALLY do reconcile if one accepts two simple facts:
Science is part right part wrong, the Bible is also part right part wrong.
When you look for the commonalities, you realize BOTH theories have their fallibility in the way the facts are interpreted by the writers/translators and readers... if you accept that God = Energy then BOTH theories can reconcile thier differences..

I do not like messing with peoples' faith, but I don't see why the Bible has to be factually true for one to have faith in God. The Genesis story is myth, the myth of a people who had faith in God. Most of the rest of the OT is their struggles to find God and be in harmony with he/she/it; that can be a source of inspiration for the faithful.

Science, on the other hand, is about discovering physical facts . . . it has nothing to do with inspiration. If one keeps the the two separate there'll be no problems, but start treating inspirational works as a factual discipline and that's where one's brain (and explanations) get twisted into a mess.

[D0n]

In 1492 a sizable majority of the world's population believed very strongly that the world was flat. One man proved them wrong. Just because 80% (not sure that figure is actually correct) of the world's population is superstitious is not "evidence" that they are right. It IS evidence that we still have a long way to go in dispelling primitive beliefs in god or gods.

A scientist relies upon repeatable and consistent results... a deist relies upon emotion and fear as well as a conviction that his belief system is the one true way (otherwise he would be following a different religion).

I will admit that historically a belief in deities has possibly provided some advantage to the human race, but I would suggest those advantages would be found in the ability of "religion" to unite human beings to a "common cause" rather than any benefit directly attributable to the deities themselves. In this we can surmise that the gods creating men, the gods themselves were created by men to institute a measure or sense of control over their fellow beings and their environment.

p.s. Agnostism (uncertainty as to the existence of any/all deities) can be argued to be a "religion" since it admits the possibility of supernatural deities. However, atheism is NOT a religion and cannot be classed as such because by it's nature it denies the existence of supernatural deities.

good point...

show me where on this planet that chemicals are spontaneously combusting into living organisms.
show me one other species that has human level intelligence... after all eyes, wings, legs flippers are all thing you can find on multiple species... why not human level intelligence from an insect, fish or crustacean? oddly enough the only species to have that level of intelligence decided to overwhelmingly say they believe in God.

[Nesster]

How do we know the age of the Earth?

The fun kicked off when GQ Magazine quoted political hot property Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., saying in an interview that our planet's age was "one of the great mysteries." Acknowledging the many believers in the biblical account of creation, Rubio said, "Whether the Earth was created in seven days, or seven actual eras, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to answer that."

But Rubio's answer upset pundits and geophysicists. The actual age of our planet had been provided some time ago by a scientist whose contributions were ignored in the opinion-page fights that followed. The scientist was Caltech geophysicist, Clair Cameron Patterson, the forgotten man in the week's most discussed debate, besides Thursday's Lions vs. Texans NFL refereeing debacle, of course.
---
Lost amid the political back-and-forth is the answer to the question of how we know the age of our planet. And that is a shame, because the scientist who figured it out, Patterson, also provided the planet more than just its birth date. He saved many of us alive today from the scourge of lead poisoning.
---
In 1955, Patterson published a study in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, that reported lead ratios found in one of the Canyon Diablo meteorites. These iron meteorites are the leftover pieces of a big one that created Meteor Crater in Arizona about 50,000 years ago. Most important, they were also leftovers from the formation of the solar system, which before the publication of his papers was known only to be billions of years ago. As Patterson explained in an interview in the year that he died, the Canyon Diablo meteorites didn't contain any uranium, a metal that radioactively decays into lead at well-established rates taking hundreds of millions of years. Other rocks contained both lead and uranium, screwing up earlier age estimates.

So, by reporting the ratio of lead types found in these pristine meteorites and comparing them to lead ratios found in the other rocks on the Earth and other meteorites, Patterson could calculate the age of the solar system, when the Earth formed, to be 4.55 billion years old, give or take 70 million years. "Except for a few minor disagreements, this paper is probably a concrete expression of the attitudes of most investigators in the field," Patterson noted in the study.

The estimate, now refined and narrowed by other investigations, has stood for five decades, Eiler says, "and has only gotten more solid over time."

RealClearScience - Why Strict Atheism Is Unscientific

"Scientists, if you're not an atheist, you're not doing science right," PZ Myers -- a well-known blogger, biology professor and atheist -- regularly preaches.

But if this is true, then as many as half of scientists are doing science wrong. A 2009 study from the Pew Research Center polled members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Fifty-one percent of respondents reported a belief in a higher power. Does this mean that it's too late for science? Has religion already pillaged the minds of researchers worldwide? No, of course it hasn't.

"It seems to me that we as a society have lately been caught in this false dichotomy where it's either God as the guy with the beard on the cloud or nothing at all," neuroscientist David Eagleman told Discovery News.

Staunch atheists often falsely characterize followers of religion as being "all-in" with their beliefs, opining that they ascribe to the whole creationist, woo-y shebang. "Where's your evidence?" atheists mockingly question. "You can't prove that God exists!" they accuse (correctly). Yet, hypocritically, strict atheists are guilty of the exact same crime: belief without evidence.

"We know too little to commit to a position of strict atheism. [But] we know way too much to commit to any particular religious story," Eagleman said.

Just as it's a leap of faith for a religious person to assert that God incontrovertibly exists, it's an equally large leap for a strict atheist to declare, without question, that God does not exist. As Carl Sagan eloquently explained:

"An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do now to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed".

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. As this statement applies to science, so does it apply to religion. History is replete with signs that an all-powerful deity may not exist, but such substantiation is nowhere near tantamount to proof -- especially, as Albert Einstein said, in a universe as incomprehensibly vast as our own:

"The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly."

Ultimately, the key is not to be swayed to one extreme or the other -- fundamentalist religion or strict atheism -- but to walk a reasoned middle path. Eagleman believes that path is "possibilianism," the concept of holding multiple beliefs or hypotheses whilst exploring new ideas.

"The goal is to avoid committing to any particular story," Eagleman told Discovery News, "whether that's religious fundamentalism or strict atheism. The goal of possibilianism is to retain the wonder that drives us all into science in the first place and to avoid acting as though we know the answers to things we can't possibly know at the moment."

Strict atheists do the world an incredible service by promoting the scientific method, skepticism, and critical thinking. But they do a disservice by campaigning against religion or touting -- as pure truth -- the non-existence of God, for those actions (especially the latter) are just as unscientific as a blind belief in all aspects of religion.

This summer, a worldwide poll showed that atheism is on the rise and religiosity is on the decline. It is my hope that these "New Atheists" and agnostics won't narrowly focus on denigrating religion, but will instead focus on encouraging open-mindedness and discouraging fundamentalism.

That would surely make the world a more enlightened place.

[Ratmagiclady]

I do not like messing with peoples' faith, but I don't see why the Bible has to be factually true for one to have faith in God. The Genesis story is myth, the myth of a people who had faith in God. Most of the rest of the OT is their struggles to find God and be in harmony with he/she/it; that can be a source of inspiration for the faithful.

Science, on the other hand, is about discovering physical facts . . . it has nothing to do with inspiration. If one keeps the the two separate there'll be no problems, but start treating inspirational works as a factual discipline and that's where one's brain (and explanations) get twisted into a mess.

Definitely part of the problem is making false equivalency, (Both Science and My Religion Are Right And Wrong) ...when that's talking about people making authority claims from a particular book that's treated as if it overrode reality... And it creates problems between religions to do so, too, since other religions may not entertain that 'conflict' never mind false equivalency to begin with.

[wildweasel]

Don - animals evolved before plants I'm afraid.

[Just1MoreDave]

good point...

show me where on this planet that chemicals are spontaneously combusting into living organisms.
show me one other species that has human level intelligence... after all eyes, wings, legs flippers are all thing you can find on multiple species... why not human level intelligence from an insect, fish or crustacean? oddly enough the only species to have that level of intelligence decided to overwhelmingly say they believe in God.

The argument here is the same as your time argument: point of reference. If your point of reference includes all the stuff humans do really well, the other species are going to fail and we will declare [hollow] victory. A bird might just as easily say "OK, migrate 8000 miles one way to the exact point you were born."

[D0n]

The argument here is the same as your time argument: point of reference. If your point of reference includes all the stuff humans do really well, the other species are going to fail and we will declare [hollow] victory. A bird might just as easily say "OK, migrate 8000 miles one way to the exact point you were born."

salmon do that as well.... and aboriginals in north america navigated and traded through the continent without maps.. again

with only the earth as a point of reference, I'm sayin the argument that evolution theory is right and creationism is wrong is based on one point of reference which must exclude all other points of reference to assume it is correct.

it is the equivalent of saying a house has no back walls because you can't see anything but the front of the house from where you're standing.

too narrow a view point to make that assumption.

Genesis does have an uncanny penchant for describing the creation of the universe and earth in the EXACT same order that Scientists would describe the big bang theory and evolution theory.... so the only difference is the six days actually... six days from God's point of reference could easily be the billions of years evolutionists need to make thier theory work from an earthly perspective. if you actually understand how time works...

Bible says God made man from the earth.... science says you put a cadiver in a furnace and cremate it all you got left is the same materials that you can dig out of the earth... and science is still conspicuously missing a link or two in the theory we evolved from apes...

Bible says God made eve from adam's rib... science say cloning works...

the scientific description of Energy is strikingly similar to the Biblical description of God.

I subscribe to the belief that there is an intelligence behind the whole universe and that what we see when we look at the universe IS God... the same way we look at a slide of a slice of brain is a cluster of cells, shows us what the cells look like but doesn't tell us who the person was or what they thought about... we can only see the cells.... but science say my theory is also possible...
The Same Laws That Govern Your Brain's Development May Also Control The Growth Of The Universe | Popular Science
when you look up at the stars, or down at the earth, you are in fact LOOKING RIGHT AT GOD. He's right f'k'n there in front of your eyes, and you're part of him. and He's the intelligence behind it all.. the ENERGY giving it life and motion.

No where in the Bible does it say HOW God created all these things, just that he did, and nowhere in the science books is there any evidence that actually disproves God. If instead of arguing which one is right, it becomes obvious that these two theories can reconcile and co-exist... but explaining this in some circles is the equivalent of trying to empty an olympic sized pool of knowledge into a shot glass sized brain, so I'm done. (this btw would also explain why the Bible is so oversimplified in it's explanations... trying to explain HOW He created the earth to an illiterate shepherd in a desert thousands of years ago, God was bound to leave out some of the technical jargon..like quantum mechanics.)..lol!