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Member (Idle past 836 days) Posts: 2339 From: Socorro, New Mexico USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: YEC Problem with Science Above and Beyond Evolution | |||||||||||||||||||||||
nwr Member Posts: 6408 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
I'd like to see the scientists give their descriptions about how science would be affected by the YEC assumptions.
Here is an example. The conservation of energy is a central principle of physics. It is used everyday by scientists, when doing basic scientific computations. It is involved in the operations of your air conditioner and your automobile. The YEC scenario of rapid movement of continents after the flood, is incompatible with the principle of conservation of energy. For, if conservation held at that time, the amount of energy released by such rapid tectonic activity would have destroyed life on earth with no need for a flood. And Noah would not have been left around to report on it.
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nwr Member Posts: 6408 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
All YEC says that I'm aware of is that you can't assume that conditions have always been the same on this planet so that the rate of decay has always been the same.
Scientists do not assume that conditions have always been the same on this planet. In fact they report conditions that were quite different in the past. What scientist do assume, is that the relation between conditions and evidence is about the same. For example, they assume that the ways we measure length today would have worked just as well in the past. If that assumption were wildly wrong, then life as we know it could not have existed - that's an implication of the fine tuning argument. If you want to assume that radioactive decay occured much faster in the past, then it would have had to release far more energy. That's where the principle of conservation of energy is relevant. A faster radioactive decay would have resulted in higher radiation levels, probably high enough that life as we know it could not have existed.
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nwr Member Posts: 6408 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
I'm trying to show that scientists don't depend on the ToE as much as they think they do, if at all.
Biologists depend heavily on ToE. Geologists and anthropologists depend on it less, but they still depend on it. For most other sciences, ToE is not important to their work. However this entirely misses the point. If we completely abandon ToE, YEC assumptions are still wrong. The flood still did not happen. The earth is still far older than YECs assume. The Australian aborigines are still older than the purported time of Adam and Eve. Biologically modern humans were still around for far longer than YECs are willing to contemplate. These are all facts, and very stubborn facts at that. You cannot wave them away by dismissing ToE. You must also dismiss physics, geology, chemistry.
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nwr Member Posts: 6408 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
Again, this is all speculative about the distant past whose conditions we can only guess at, and who knows how many other variables should be taken into account that are being overlooked.
Actually, it is the YEC position that is highly speculative about the past. Scientists are not guessing about the past, they are measuring it. And they are carefully cross-calibrating their measuring methods in multiple ways. Just about the only way that they could be grossly wrong, is if something like Last Thursdayism is true.
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nwr Member Posts: 6408 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
For most other sciences, ToE is not important to their work. Well talk about hand-waving away. {Actually you're verifying it I see} I'm trying to show this and everybody's denying it. However this entirely misses the point. If we completely abandon ToE, YEC assumptions are still wrong. No that is not the point of this thread. The point of this thread is that YECs claim that science would not be appreciably damaged by the loss of evolutionary theory and you pretty much just agreed that that is so.
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nwr Member Posts: 6408 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
And they are carefully cross-calibrating their measuring methods in multiple ways. Just about the only way that they could be grossly wrong, is if something like Last Thursdayism is true. I have no clue what Last Thursdayism is.
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nwr Member Posts: 6408 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
I'm going to stay away from this thread now because it's become counterproductive for me, but I wanted at least to answer your post since you went to some trouble. Nevertheless you will call this "hand-waving away" (which I take as YOUR hand-waving away), although there is no point in elaborating that I can see, but there is nothing in your post that a YEC would object to. None of it would be eliminated by a YEC frame of reference.
I think you have a serious misunderstanding of science. Science is not "pick up a fact here, a fact there, and put them on display at the museum of science." Scientists are very highly motivated people. They do their science because they are driven to it by their motivations, by their curiosity to find out what they can about nature. If you impose a YEC frame of reference on scientists, then most of them will either abandon science completely, or they will migrate to somewhere else where they can continue to do what they are driven to do. The YEC frame of reference undermines what drives scientists. It denies the very possibility of science.
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nwr Member Posts: 6408 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
Isn't it obvious?
God wanted us to see that the world is billions of years old. God wanted us to see that anatomically modern humans have been around for 100,000 years or more. God wanted us to see that there was no global flood. If God had not wanted this, he could have made the world different from what it is. You are taking the word (the written text) of fallible men, and making it more important that what we can see for ourselves as God's handiwork.
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nwr Member Posts: 6408 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
That's such a delusion, to think that relying on our own senses and intellect, "what we can see for ourselves," is anything but deception, when the written text was dictated by God Himself to save us from exactly that kind of conceit and deception.
If our own senses are so unreliable that we cannot see for ourselves, then we also cannot read for ourselves. The idea that "the written text was dictated by God Himself" is silly. There is no evidence for this. There is no basis for this other than the dogma with which you have been indoctrinated. When I was a young child, I looked at the sky. It appeared to be a domed ceiling that was luminescent during the day, and mostly dark at night (except for those faint twinkles). We now know better. We know realize that the childish view is naive, and that the sky is lit not by its own luminescence but by the scattered light from the sun. Genesis I describes the naive view that I had as a young child, the idea of a luminescent domed ceiling above the earth. If Genesis I was "dictated by God Himself" then why did God dictate such naive nonsense? Was God so ignorant that He did not know better? Surely, that alone is sufficient evidence to show that the test was written by fallible men.
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nwr Member Posts: 6408 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
while a testament to the wonders of the universe given to ignorant and earth-bound ancient hebrews would be truly inspiring, why would god do such a thing, besides to prove himself? sure, he could have given us the encyclopedia galactica had he wanted -- but would the people he was giving it to understand it? would we understand it today?
Okay, that's a possibility. But that would make it a simple minded explanation that could be understood by the people of that time. It would not make it correct 21st century science.
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nwr Member Posts: 6408 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
Nobody claims the Bible is science. BUT IT IS TRUTH!
In exactly the same way that when parents tell their children about Santa Claus, IT IS TRUTH.
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nwr Member Posts: 6408 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
I am saying nothing against God's truth. I am criticizing your interpretation of it.
I my classes, I will often give an oversimplified description at the beginning of the semester. If I were to give the full details, that would be too complex for the students at that stage. I come back to it later in the semester, when the students have the needed background, and give the full details. That isn't telling lies to my students. That is being an effective teacher. Why couldn't God have been an effective teacher, giving the people an oversimplified account that would serve their needs at that time, yet leaving the full details in the world in the form of evidence for people to discover them when they were ready for it. It seems to me that you are the one who is questioning God. You are insisting that God must fit your own rigid stereotype.
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nwr Member Posts: 6408 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
Nobody is against using your intellect. The point is your intellect is flawed and you misjudge the evidence and refuse to recognize that.
Or maybe your intellect is flawed, and you are misreading the Bible. Maybe you are not reading it the way it was intended to be read.
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nwr Member Posts: 6408 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
The messages of the Bible we are discussing are not ambiguous.
I agree. The description of the sky as a luminous domed ceiling above the earth is quite unambiguous. The description that the luminosity of the sky is independent of the sun is umambiguous. That the description is wrong, is also unambiguous.
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nwr Member Posts: 6408 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
solid, too. to keep out the water.
Right. I'm wondering you you would do workaday meteorology on the Genesis 1 model. Edited by nwr, : spelling
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