13th century rabbi says universe billions of years old

[ Please ignore - I misinterpreted the last part of the section I quoted. --Percy ]May as well pile on: Adam was created more than 15 billion years ago? That makes him older than the planet he lived on.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Add "ignore" comment.

Ah, yes, I see it now.--Percy

Can anyone site me an undisputed scientific fact that proves conclusively beyond any possibility of doubt that it's not invisible virtual turtles all the way down?Seriously, science never proves anything "conclusively beyond any possibility of doubt." Science is tentative about everything. Even what seem to us as undoubted scientific axioms and are treated thus in almost all scientific endeavors are questioned in some scientific quarters, such as that scientific laws are the same across all time and space.Attempts to resolve the contradictory notions of science and religion usually take one of three avenues:

1. Science and religion will eventually become mutually consistent through scientific and religious study, a la Thomas Aquinas.
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2. Science is useful and important, but where science and religion differ religion must take precedence, a la the Oxford school of thought.
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3. Separate magesteriums a la Stephen Jay Gould (and probably some earlier philosopher). They govern separate realms that need not ever meet and need not ever be reconciled.

I sense you're inflexible concerning a conservative literal interpretation of Genesis, and that means you're left with number 2, because number 1 will never happen (when tried the result is religious restrictions on scientific efforts and ideas a la the Spanish Inquisition and Galileo) and number 3 must be unacceptable to you (and isn't realistic anyway).--Percy

To more directly answer your question from your Message 38: Science is not a process of accepting everything that hasn't been disproved. Proving most arbitrary claims false isn't possible anyway. If someone claimed there were intelligent beings living on a planet circling a star in the Andromeda galaxy, it could never be disproved.Science accepts that for which a consensus has developed around a framework of understanding that interprets a body of evidence. But it is important to realize that something isn't true just because a consensus has formed. Rather, in science a consensus develops around that which is likely true, because it is believed that only things that are likely true could successfully navigate the numerous scientific obstacles raised by efforts at verification, replication and persuasion.Scientifically, the best that can be said for Genesis is that much of it isn't contradicted by current scientific understanding. Like novels about real places and real people, many things are true, many things could be true, and many things are not true.--Percy

It's interesting only in the same sense that numerology is interesting.--Percy