Summations Only

No, we can imagine the possibility. We can imagine lots of possibilities. We can imagine pigs with wings. What we can't do is see any evidence for pigs with wings.

No, you believe things that contradict science in order to cling to your favorite interpretation of your favorite book. See?

This interchange is copied at foreveryoung's request from the Age Correlations thread: But do we have to be able to answer these downright metaphysical questions to think about what things would be like if various weights and times and speeds and so forth were different?Without "really understanding what mass is", you can say what would happen if you weighed 500lb. Without "understanding what time and space is" you can say how long it would take you to drive to Los Angeles if Los Angeles was only ten miles away from you. You don't need to know if space is "merely a mathematical construct" to figure this out. Why would you?And, after all, physicists have done quite well at doing physics without doing any metaphysics. You ask them to put a man on the moon, they don't sit around scratching their heads and saying .... well, we can't do that, we haven't figured out what space really is. So why should this question be any different, except that creationists don't like the answer? Is this not just a bit of special pleading?

If you're going to do the sarcasm, what am I going to do?

So if it rained on the day of the new moon, and for the next few days, the Romans would see a new moon 35 days after the previous one, because it would wait to be a new moon until Romans had looked at it ... and as it always rains on exactly the same days each year in Italy, this meant that certain months were always 35 days long.The 20 day months, of course, were caused by those "early new moons" we hear so little about.

Jar is right.On the one hand we have your favorite interpretation of your favorite translation of your favorite recension of your favorite book. Errors may have crept in somewhere in that process.On the other hand, we have the universe. If there is a God, then to square your favorite interpretation (etc, etc) we have to suppose that the universe itself is one big lie. Because it looks like it would look if it was billions of years old.As Kingsley wrote about Omphalism: "I cannot believe that God has written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind."If he has, then I confess that I am deceived. But do you or I believe that this is what God has done?Believe in God all you want. But at least believe that God created this universe, the one that we actually live in.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

I don't see how you jump from: "is not a supernatural book" to "should simply be thrown in the trash". I don't believe that the periodic table or the writings of Plutarch are supernatural, but I don't simply throw them in the trash. But the assumption is just that the universe is not a big lie. That's it. If it is, then we are deceived, if it isn't, then we aren't. But it looks like that's what the rocks record. That's why even back in the nineteenth century creationists familiar with geology needed to invent Omphalism. This is why this thread is still pushing Omphalism in a more obscure form. If we "use our noggins", we find that the Earth is old. That's what scientists have concluded, having employed their noggins. And would you have even thought of rejecting this conclusion were it not for your adherence to your favorite interpretation of your favorite book? You're sorry that God didn't create the universe a different way?Well, I guess this is where your brand of bibliolatry leads you. You believe in principle that God is omnipotent and omniscient, but you regret that what with all his power and wisdom he didn't choose to create the universe in such a way that you would appear to be right rather than completely wrong.Perhaps you could mention this blunder to him the next time you pray.

So do we all say that it is possible. But this is the sort of possibility that we ignore until we find any evidence for it, otherwise we have to abandon science for epistemological nihilism.Let me show you what I mean. Here's someone being scientific. It's you. Sound reasoning, I think. Except ... what if the sill marks the point at which, without leaving any other evidence, the laws of nature temporarily and locally changed so that soggy wet mud became impermeable to igneous intrusion?You tacitly discount this. You have to in order to draw your conclusion. You have to in order to draw any conclusion about anything from any evidence whatsoever. If you allow for the possibility that the laws of nature changed without leaving any evidence that this happened ... well, in that case the phrase "if you'll believe that, you'll believe anything" becomes more than a jibe, because if you believe that, you can believe anything.So we provisionally rule out unevidenced changes in the laws of nature. Or rather, you and I rule it out when we consider the popular creationist dogma of flood geology. And I, but not you, also rule it out when considering the popular creationist dogma of a young universe.If you don't join me in this, then you are simply being arbitrary; if you get to pick and choose when you're going to be an actualist and when you're not, then again you can believe anything. You can begin by arbitrarily deciding that you'll believe X but not Y. Then you can say: "All the evidence supports X, so it's true. And all the evidence supports Y, but maybe the laws of nature were different in the particular time and place when the evidence was formed, so Y can still be untrue, the evidence proves nothing."Well, would a little consistency be to much to ask? Either follow the scientific method, or become a complete Pyrrhonian skeptic. But an epistemological system which allows everyone to pick and choose what to believe according to his or her taste lacks dignity, integrity --- and usefulness, unless flattering one's own preconceptions be considered a use.

Actually, from the earliest days much of philosophy has consisted of pointing out, with unnecessary smugness, the rather obvious fact that certain knowledge is not to be attained.Among the reasons why this is so is the existence of people like you, who can always come up with some sort of mighta-coulda-if-and-maybe scenario under which what appears to be plainly true isn't. Since you can always do this about any scientific proposition, no such proposition can be considered absolutely certain. Honesty would consist of admitting that this uncertainty rather than pretending to an absolute authority which no-one in fact possesses. Would you think me honest if I declared that it was absolutely certain that the laws of physics have never changed, or would you think me either dishonest or a fool?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Y'know, someone disagreed with me once. Maybe more than once. It didn't have the same effect on me as it seems to have on you.

Ah yes, I was forgetting the bit where we set fire to you and ran over your dog.Words, as the old proverb goes, will never hurt you, but ever since we found a way to pelt you with stones and beat you with sticks over TCP/IP, your life has just been miserable, hasn't it?

Well, the stuff that godsriddle has written is merely fatuous. He maintains that we see things (which we do not see) which confirms things the bible says (which it doesn't say) thus controverting the opinions of physicists (which they do not hold). Rarely have we seen a creationist so utterly dependent on making stuff up --- and that's really saying something.---Foreveryoung is more interesting. Yes, we can imagine that physical laws have changed. But we have no evidence for it. In doing science, we have to suppose that what, according to all the evidence, is a law of nature, is a law of nature, until we find out differently. If we stop doing that, we can believe anything we please.There are other problems with f.e.y.'s approach. One is its absence of content. He has to suppose that various apparent constants all changed together in some synchronized way such that they wouldn't make the sun blow up or the earth to fall into the sun, and without disturbing at all the complex biochemistry on which life depends --- all that these changes must do is deceive astronomers about the age of the universe. Well, he has presented no such schedule of changes to the not-really-constants of nature, he just says: suppose it was true. Well, that might be like saying: suppose there was a four-sided triangle. We don't know if there is a self-consistent scenario that achieves what he wants it to achieve, and he hasn't tried to put one forward.A final problem is theological. There seems on the face of it to be no reason why a being who is by hypothesis omnipotent shouldn't have made the Earth however many years ago f.e.y. thinks he made it, with completely stable laws of nature. By his hypothesis, it seems that the only effect that doing it his way rather than that way would have is that scientists trying to figure out the age of the universe would get it wrong. It would be, as Kingsley said, an enormous and gratuitous lie.