Religion or Science - How do they compare?

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I think today's evidence by creationists happens to be very good, and in fact I think they've proven the Flood

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That seems to be an example of your fantasies. They have no reasonable explanation for the geological or fossil records and they can’t even agree on which rocks were due to the Flood (I think most put the end of the Flood at the end of the Cretaceous, disagreeing with your idea that the Flood accounts for all of it).

DNA is a wonderful new tool but it can't work unless you have DNA samples from the past event in question to compare it to, right? Aren't you really restricted to a very short historical time period where such a method is useful? Only a very short span of ancestry though which isn't going to confirm species to species evolution. And interpretive assumptions must play a part in this which could mislead you. But all this information is like the information in the criminal case I describe above: you've got the body in the suitcase and that's all you've got. All the rest has to be figured out and the geologic column doesn't give you anything you could actually trace to an actually known past time as the objects in the suitcase do in the criminal case. You imagine that past time FROM the stuff in the geo column, but the objects in the suitcase actually correlate with OTHER things in the KNOWN past that end up identifying the dead man and people he knew in the actual past. You can get a theory out of the stuff in the rocks, but you can never ever confirm it because there is nothing FROM the past, like repair records or bank records, let alone living witnesses, to corroborate your theory. No, all you have is the theory no matter whether there is evidence to show against it. DNA offers no evidence of macroevolution at all, just the usual stuff you have to interpret and your interpretations may be wrong. Fossils are just a lot of dead things.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You say it's "mostly wishful thinking", but then you say: This is inconsistent with your other statements. It is expressed with much certainty and not as wishful thinking, and how can you believe creationists have already proven the flood when you also believe the required evidence hasn't materialized yet?You ignored the other questions. Why do you think forensics only works for the witnessed and historical, which seems in opposition to its true utility in unveiling information about the unwitnessed and unhistorical?Why do you think evidence from the distant past can't be analyzed?How do you know where the distant past begins? Or put another way, how distant is too distant and how do you know?--PercyEdited by Percy, : Reword slightly.

The consensus views of science change through any combination of more evidence, more analysis, and improved insights.Scientific views that correspond poorly to reality would have little use and their weaknesses would be quickly revealed. For instance, if the New Horizons spacecraft launched in 2006 had used Newtonian physics in its guidance systems then wherever it ended up in 2015 it wouldn't have been anywhere near Pluto.An evolutionary example would be the new strains of influenza A virus that appear annually. Development of new vaccines for new strains stems from our understanding that mutations create new strains (by creating new alleles) that are more effective at escaping last year's vaccine. Were this understanding incorrect then we would experience poor success at detecting new strains and developing vaccines for them, which would in turn lead us to begin to question our understanding of mutation contributing to improved reproductive success and to seek other mechanisms as the source of the new strains.--Percy

Instead of conjuring up contradictions and inconsistencies, how about making a BIG effort to figure out what I actually meant? I just went through a ridiculous series of posts with NN about something similar. I finally gave up because he won't try to figure out what I meant and insists I'm contradicting myself when I'm not. It's just a matter of recognizing distinctions but whatever. This gets very tedious after a while.

Really Faith? Really???Once again for the umpteenth time see any one of these age measurement threads

1. Age Correlations and an Old Earth Version 1 number 1 (297 posts)
2. Age Correlations and an Old Earth: Part II. Version 1 number 2 (306 posts)
3. Age Correlations and an Old Earth: Version 1 No 3 (formerly Part III) (357 posts)
4. Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1 (currently 578 posts)
5. Part 1 - Biological Counting Systems
   
6. Part 2 - Physical/Chemical Counting Systemsand
   Part 3Part 3 - Radiometric and Cosmogenic Measuring Systems

The reason that these threads continue to grow and expand is because there is NO valid contradictory information, while additional supporting information keeps getting added. Belief is not evidence or fact or anything but wishful thinking.Until you CAN produce contradictory evidence, not just to any one method of dating, but also to why they all correlate with each other, then [i]not ONE of the methods is invalidated.You are aware of these threads, you have admitted you can't explain ANY of the methods fitting your fantasy age, and yet you blather on as if they were just invented.Get a grip and shut up about age until you have evidence.Enjoy

Why don't most Bible teachers mention this?

ALL YOU'VE GOT IS DATING. If other evidence conclusively shows a young earth there is something wrong with the dating methods no matter how convincing they seem. I think other evidence will eventually conclusively show a young earth. For now I put the dating methods in the column for your side.

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ALL YOU'VE GOT IS DATING.

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And the fossils, and the strata. There’s a whole lot more evidence out there.

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If other evidence conclusively shows a young earth there is something wrong with the dating methods no matter how convincing they seem. I think other evidence will eventually conclusively show a young earth.

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The evidence we have is so strong I think we can rightly dismiss that possibility. The idea that there is something incredibly wrong with so many different dating methods - and they still produce strongly consistent results itself isn’t worth considering. When you add in the other evidence, you might as well hope for proof that the Earth is flat.Why not accept the truth? The evidence says that the Earth is undeniably far, far older than the mere 10,000 years or less than YEC claims. There is no real evidence to the contrary worth considering.

It depends what you mean by 'bible teachers'. If you mean people who preach to the laiety - it would confuse their narrative which is why they don't mention it (or they themselves don't understand the subject they are teaching).Go to a seminary or university class on the Bible and they often will.

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There are striking resemblances between the biblical gods of the Patriarchs and the Canaanite god El. El is the head of a council of gods. He is said to have a long white beard. He dwells on a mountaintop in a tent. His epithets include Father of all creatures, Bull, King. He’s also described as the protector of patriarchs, patriarchal figures, a God of the father of the clan, it says in the text. He guides them. He protects them. He promises them descendants. Many biblical passages depict God exactly this way, as the head of a council of divine beings. He’s occasionally described with some of the epithets that are associated with El. He’s referred to as the father of all creatures.

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So let’s consider Smith’s convergence first. The Canaanite roots of Israel’s ancestors are clear. The Hebrew language itself is essentially Canaanite, a Canaanite dialect. The Canaanite god El was, from the biblical text, the God of Israel’s earliest ancestors. Through a process of convergence, he argues: the God Yahweh was the god that we think originally came from a region further south, Sinai, Edom, somewhere further south but this god, through a process of convergence and cultural mixing, began to take on the characteristics of other deities, first El, and then Baal, or sort of simultaneously El and Baal. Later, certain aspects of this convergence would be polemicized against, and rejected as a Yahweh-only party sought to differentiate itself from those that it would now label as other, and call Canaanites, as distinct from Israelites. Smith’s model of convergence and then differentiation, has great explanatory power. It explains the deep similarity of Israel’s deity and the deities of her neighbors, but it also explains the vehement biblical polemic against Canaanite religion, and Baal worship in particular, which we will come to see.

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But to sum up, it’s clear that the biblical patriarchs and matriarchs are not strict Yahwists, as we will come to understand that term. The P and the E sources preserve this insight; and they preserve it in their insistence that the Patriarchs worshiped God as El, but at the time of the Exodus, God revealed himself as Yahweh. There’s an interesting passage in the book of Joshua, Joshua 24:14-15. Joshua was the successor to Moses. He presents the Israelites with the following choice: Now therefore revere the Lord, using the word Yahweh, revere Yahweh, and serve him with undivided loyalty. Put away the gods that your forefathers served beyond the Euphrates and in Egypt put away the gods your forefathers served beyond the Euphrates and in Egypt and serve Yahweh. / Choose this day which ones you are going to serve, but I in my household will serve Yahweh, serve the Lord. Only later would a Yahweh-only party polemicize against and seek to suppress certain what came to be seen as undesirable elements of Israelite-Judean religion, and these elements would be labeled Canaanite, as a part of a process of Israelite differentiation. But what appears in the Bible as a battle between Israelites, pure Yahwists, and Canaanites, pure polytheists, is indeed better understood as a civil war between Yahweh-only Israelites, and Israelites who are participating in the cult of their ancestors.

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RLST 145 - Lecture 7 - Israel in Egypt: Moses and the Beginning of Yahwism (Genesis 37- Exodus 4) | Open Yale Courses

But nobody denies the prevalence of polytheism, Phat, it's very clear in the Bible -- and not some made up "early" Bible, whatever that means -- very clear, that the world has been run by demon gods since the Fall when Satan succeeded in deceiving our first parents.The demon hordes that followed Satan then set themselves up as the "gods" of every local tribe on earth as the human population grew and spread out. After the Flood, which put an end to some of the evils they had brought about among humanity, they resumed their domination.They became the local gods, demanding various sorts of propitiation from gifts to human sacrifice. Why do you think the Bible keeps making such an issue of the idolatrous heathen religions? God chose Israel to be His own tribe to form a humanly recognizable base from which to demonstrate that He is the one true Creator God as against all those demon gods.He formed His own people from scratch as it were, starting with Abraham. He gave them the true Moral Law and condemned the evil practices of the idolatrous nations including human sacrifice. The Israelites actually eventually sacrificed their own infants to the demon god Molech because they got seduced away from Jehovah. Since God had already clearly told them what the consequences of disobeying His Law would be -- in Deuteronomy something and Leviticus 26 -- He gave them time to repent and then brought the army of Assyria against the northern Kingdom made up of ten tribes of Israel, which disappeared from the face of the earth, and brought Babylon against the souther Kingdom of Judah and Benjamin to take them captive for seventy years.It's ALL ABOUT THE DEMON GODS, Phat, since the human race came under their dominion as a result of the Fall. Jehovah had mercy on His erring human race and formed the Israelites as the foundation for His reeducation on righteousness and His eventual rescue from the sin that began in Eden, through the Messiah Jesus. When He comes again the demon gods will be finally punished, unfortunately along with any people who continue to follow them. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Vested interest.

Obviously, this question is at least somewhat rhetorical. But the simple answer is that she cannot accept those things. For a YEC, all of Christianity rises and sets on the idea that the Bible is literally true and that said truth must be interpreted in only one way. If God did not create the Universe in a week, did not make the first man in one day, and then did not Flood out all of life about 1500 years after that, then Christ is not real and Christianity is fraud. YECs have painted themselves into the tiniest corner using paint that can never dry. There is literally no way out for them.For someone who believes those things, the underpinning of everything is ripped away if a cave painting in Spain is 30,000 years old, or some rock is 4 billion years old, or if some pyramid was really built in 2500 or so BC. In turn astronomy, archaeology, genetics, biology, paleontology, and geology must also be bogus.And if they participate in debates, at least in those which they cannot rig by declaring evidence to be off-limits, they will have to employ bad logic, wishful thinking and denial. What else is left.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

First I'll establish some clarity about this misstatement of fact you keep making by providing an answer to Taq's question: The answer, of course, is that DNA testing does not require a witness. In fact, its greatest value is when there are no witnesses. For instance, a perpetrator chokes a victim to death, but the victim struggles and scrapes the perpetrator's skin, some of which survives beneath the victim's fingernails. The victim is dead and the perpetrator disappears into the night. The police have no witnesses. But forensics is able to analyze the skin DNA under the victim's fingernails, the DNA of the perpetrator is in the database, and the perpetrator is arrested the next day.So of course forensics works with no witnesses.And why do you believe forensics only works in the historical past? Since for you the Bible is a history book relating events from the very beginning of creation, don't you believe the entire past is historical? You mean useful to police in capturing a criminal? Why do you think that should be a defining factor concerning whether forensics works. For example, although everyone involved, including police, are long dead, DNA analysis might uncover the identity of Jack the Ripper (see DNA Reveals the Identity of Jack the Ripper?).So what are your criteria for deciding how far back in time forensics can work? As long as evidence survives the passage of time forensics should work, right? Witnesses and historicity have nothing to do with it, right? For example, DNA analysis of Neanderthals represents prehistory forensics, allowing us to determine the degree of relatedness between Neanderthals and humans. Most people of European descent share approximately 2% of their DNA with Neanderthals, who went extinct around 40,000 years ago as established by radiocarbon dating. Science tries to avoid assumptions. What is the general nature of the kinds of "interpretive assumptions" you're thinking of? We've already established that witnesses are not required. For example, charred wood in the fire pit of any ancient site tells us humans cooked there. Radiocarbon dating confirms roughly when they cooked (up to about 50,000 years ago). Bones and remains in clay pots might reveal what they cooked. No witnesses required. No historical writings required.Your claim that studying geologic strata is hampered because there are no "repair records or bank records, let alone living witnesses" is nonsensical. Everything that happens follows known natural laws and leaves evidence behind. If that evidence survives to the present then we can study it to figure out what happened. This is like saying the Bible is just a bunch of letters. Please be more honest in your discussion.--Percy

You'll never get the truth about the work of God in this world if you follow the modern revisionist scholars, Mod. It's amazing how the whole point of the Bible's rescue from the demonic domination after the Fall can be turned into something else entirely.The Israelites certainly did fall away from Jehovah, the flesh being weak and the seductiveness of the idolatrous religions being a strong pull on the flesh, but God always had a "remnant" that remained true to Him. He planned to send a Savior from the tyranny of the demons starting all the way back in Eden. The promise was kept up down the centuries always believed by the remnant and rejected by others, until the Messiah actually came.In Jesus' time the demons were possessing many people who had either inherited or fallen into enough sin to allow them to possess them, and Jesus demonstrated His purpose and His power by setting them free. He came to set all of humanity free from the false demon gods -- starting in Jerusalem but spreading around the world through the Great Commission, while the demons continued to fight tooth and claw to prevent it -- and although Satan knew Jesus was the Son of God the Messiah he totally missed God's plan of sacrificing His own Son for us.So Jesus' death on the cross does set us completely free if we believe Him and receive His power as a result of our belief. Your revisionist scholars have no clue about God's true plan either, and are continuing to seduce people away from His merciful salvation, joining with the demon gods themselves who are working tirelessly to keep as many as they can in their power and blind them to the promise of salvation. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.