Hmmm - a robust arguement?

(Murf) wrote in message . com...
Hello everybody,

Last week I was wandering the shops during my office lunch break when
I was harassed by a religeous zealot selling magazines and CDS.

Feeling argumentative I asked him whether he was (1) a creationalist
and (2) a "Young Universe" creationalist - i.e. one who believes that
dinosaurs etc didnt exist and that the universe is about 4,500 years
old...

When he replied that, yes, he didnt believe in evolution, dinosaurs
(and women's rights I assume) I suggested that he was a little
misguided.

In evidence I said "how come you can see all of the stars at night
then? After all, many of them are clearly more than 4,500 light years
away?"

He told me that "astronomy is a souless science - they lie to you".

Hmmph. He was obviously a ****, but is my line of arguemnt sound -
i.e. that you can see (or even detect) stars more than say 10,000
lightyears away a robust argument against a "young" view of
creation/existance?


Well, sort of. But they can always fall back on the claim that God
not only created everything, but he created it in a manner such that
it would look like it's billions of years old (e.g. in addition to
4,500 years ago, creating stars 10,000 ly way, he created the stream
of light between them and us that carries an image of what the star
would have looked like 10,000 years ago if it had evolved instead of
being created). However you can counter that counter-argument by
asking "Why is God trying to fool us?"

Paul Cardinale

"Paul Cardinale" wrote in message

snip

being created). However you can counter that counter-argument by
asking "Why is God trying to fool us?"

Paul Cardinale

I wouldn't bother asking , they'll have an answer to that an'all.

God's like that, 'he/she/it moves in mysterious ways'

I wish, when anyone questioned an assumption I made, I could simply reply,
'I move in mysterious ways' end of story!

Fantastic get-out clause, only God could have invented it - or a lawyer.

Sigh

you'd have thought Newton might have killed all the speculation, but sadly
not. 400 years later.

Richard Miller
No cig (gave up smoking years ago).

wrote in message ...
[snip]
If you posit an infinitely powerful god, he could blink the stars,
light, and dinosaur bones into existence at any time with any
characteristics he chooses.

So no, there is no possible argument other than such a being doesn't
exist or this god wouldn't do that, so you are back to belief.

This is generically known as "last Thursdayism" and has another more
official name of "Omphalism" that gets its name from a fancy term for
belly button.

It's an insidious notion. If you posit that the evidence of age
could have been created rather than actually grown that way through
the time it appears to have done, then you have a problem. How do
you know *you* existed last Thursday? Or yesterday? Or a half hour
ago? You *could* have been created with all those memories exactly
correct to make you *think* you existed in the past. If a deity could
and would fake such things as huge quantities of fossils, diverse
genetic information, etc. etc., then why couldn't such a deity fake
your own memory?

In fact, you don't even have to be continuous. Maybe it's easier for
a deity to let you exist on every alternate second leap year, and let
other entities have existence on some kind of time share. So, you might
exist for a second, then not exist for a few years, then exist again
for a second with only the memory of the years in between. How would
you ever possibly know? If an entity exists with the ability to create
light from stars that *APPEARS* billions of years old, and to do so
effectively instantly, why shouldn't such an entity be able to create
you with the memory of having existed a half hour ago?

The only real answer to such notions is: They don't belong in science
because they are not applicable to the jobs and tasks of science.
Because there isn't really any way to predict anything from them,
or test them. If you posit an arbitrarily powerful entity that can
do such tricks, then as long as that entity chooses not to let us
know about him, (or remember knowing about him) then there's not a
damn thing we can ever do with the notion.
Socks

In article ,
says...

"Paul Cardinale" wrote in message

snip

being created). However you can counter that counter-argument by
asking "Why is God trying to fool us?"

Paul Cardinale

I wouldn't bother asking , they'll have an answer to that an'all.

God's like that, 'he/she/it moves in mysterious ways'

I wish, when anyone questioned an assumption I made, I could simply reply,
'I move in mysterious ways' end of story!

Fantastic get-out clause, only God could have invented it - or a lawyer.

Sigh

you'd have thought Newton might have killed all the speculation, but sadly
not. 400 years later.


I always find it strange when I am told that God deserves praise for
creating all that is good in the world, but that all that is bad is the
fault of humans. Sounds a bit like marriage to me ;-)

Gary

In article ,
Murf wrote:
Hello everybody,

Last week I was wandering the shops during my office lunch break when
I was harassed by a religeous zealot selling magazines and CDS.

Feeling argumentative I asked him whether he was (1) a creationalist
and (2) a "Young Universe" creationalist - i.e. one who believes that
dinosaurs etc didnt exist and that the universe is about 4,500 years
old...

When he replied that, yes, he didnt believe in evolution, dinosaurs
(and women's rights I assume) I suggested that he was a little
misguided.

In evidence I said "how come you can see all of the stars at night
then? After all, many of them are clearly more than 4,500 light years
away?"

He told me that "astronomy is a souless science - they lie to you".

Hmmph. He was obviously a ****, but is my line of arguemnt sound -
i.e. that you can see (or even detect) stars more than say 10,000
lightyears away a robust argument against a "young" view of
creation/existance?

Cheers!

Rob
Sheffield

God creates all the fossils and geological features in place, giving the
appearance of an old Earth. God created the light from the stars in
transit, so you see them today.

Both those arguments circulated in published literature. It's bound to
happen when an argument involves an omniscient and omnipotent Being who
can do anything He wants at any time for any reason.

Another angle I've seen is that the speed of light is changing. One
fellow, I believe I saw this in an Institute for Creation Research
publication, fitted a variety of curves to speed of light measurements
versus time, and discovered they best fitted a logarithmic cosine,
demonstrating that he knew how to select "Fit Function" in his stat
software but knew nothing about error bars. Generate a finite set of data
with error bars that decrease in time, but whose values are essentially
random within the error bars, and you'll find a logarithmic cosine that
fits it.

I was even told by a bright-eyed believer that The Flood was such a
violent event that it changed the decay rates of atoms. The eV of
chemical bonds versus MeV of nuclear bonds is enough to say that argument
falls short by at least six orders of magnitude, but such people aren't
likely to appreciate arguments of energy scales.

--
"When the fool walks through the street, in his lack of understanding he
calls everything foolish." -- Ecclesiastes 10:3, New American Bible

"Gary Cavie" wrote in message
t...
In article ,
says...

"Paul Cardinale" wrote in message

snip

being created). However you can counter that counter-argument by
asking "Why is God trying to fool us?"

Paul Cardinale

I wouldn't bother asking , they'll have an answer to that an'all.

God's like that, 'he/she/it moves in mysterious ways'

I wish, when anyone questioned an assumption I made, I could simply
reply,
'I move in mysterious ways' end of story!

Fantastic get-out clause, only God could have invented it - or a lawyer.

Sigh

you'd have thought Newton might have killed all the speculation, but
sadly
not. 400 years later.


I always find it strange when I am told that God deserves praise for
creating all that is good in the world, but that all that is bad is the
fault of humans. Sounds a bit like marriage to me ;-)

Gary

'Marriage' - Take my mother in law... please

That said, over this side of the Pond, we hear about yesterdays Kerry Vs
Bush debate.

Apparently God got a look in. I really wanted to ask if they had a hotline
to him. They seemed very well informed, or at least in awe of his powers.

It's the same this side of the Pond too

I could rant on, better just to stick to the Science, its predictable.

wrote:
In sci.physics Allen Whittaker wrote:

When ever you try to combin science and religion it never seems to work out.
But there are some ways in which I think you can believe in both. The Bible
was written for the most part by man, Save a few parts which are direct
words from God. Because of this man is not perfect so how can we create a
perfect book? we can't, but we tried.


How can the bible explain all the stars? it says God created the Heavens and
the Earth but lacks the meaning of each. Since the bible was written by man
we know that we would only have knowledge of this planet and not others.


In the end it creates alot of questions that are not easily answered. But to
get back on track, anyone that says the world is only 4500 years old is
false. Sumer was around 4000bce, meaning 6000 years ago. And we have dated
objects back to about 8000 and 9000 bce, meaning just as the last ice age
ended at about 12000bce.


Whats interesting is that in Sumer texts they talk of a great flood story
that destroyed all the lands and that one man was chosen to save animals and
his family. Sounds like another story I know of about a man called Noah. But
the sumer story was written around 2700bce, about 4700 years ago. Far to
early for the bible to have been written.


When you look at the bible then, I think they were taking these histories
and trying to put it into the views of God. After all if he was around now
he would have been around then?


Being a historian and haveing a strong faith is hard.


Allen Whittaker


Those that I know that understand science and believe in a religion
generally take the position that such stories are parables.

From that position, a god created the universe; the mechanism he used was
the big bang. Nothing to reconcile there.

Everything becomes intractable and orthogonal from the literal position,
i.e. that the world is only 4500 years old.

My favorite quote on the subject:

"In the beginning the Universe was created.

This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a
bad move."

Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"




What I have ingrained into myself about God is this: God is the who and
the why of the Universe, which leaves us with figuring out the what,
where, and how. To me science is worship (not scientology).

Murf wrote:
Hello everybody,

Last week I was wandering the shops during my office lunch break when
I was harassed by a religeous zealot selling magazines and CDS.

Feeling argumentative I asked him whether he was (1) a creationalist
and (2) a "Young Universe" creationalist - i.e. one who believes that
dinosaurs etc didnt exist and that the universe is about 4,500 years
old...

When he replied that, yes, he didnt believe in evolution, dinosaurs
(and women's rights I assume) I suggested that he was a little
misguided.

In evidence I said "how come you can see all of the stars at night
then? After all, many of them are clearly more than 4,500 light years
away?"

He told me that "astronomy is a souless science - they lie to you".

Hmmph. He was obviously a ****, but is my line of arguemnt sound -
i.e. that you can see (or even detect) stars more than say 10,000
lightyears away a robust argument against a "young" view of
creation/existance?


You might as well try to explain "green" to a man
who's been blind since birth. If someone believes the literal
truth of Genesis, then they are so entirely ignorant of science
and logic that no argument on your part will sway them.

Those that understand the issues at all will counter your arguments
with the statement that the world was created 6000 years ago with
all the fossils, geological formations, radioisotopes, and light
from distant stars put there to make it look older as a test of
faith.

Two counterarguments immediately come to mind:
- The world was actually created 15 minutes ago with all of us
and all of our memories in place, because God is just such
a tricky SOB.

- God created the universe 15 billion years ago, via the
big bang. After that, everything happened more or less
as scientists believe, except that he put in the Genesis
story to weed out the stupid.

-E

Cheers!

Rob
Sheffield

wrote in
om:

wrote in message
... [snip]
If you posit an infinitely powerful god, he could blink the stars,
light, and dinosaur bones into existence at any time with any
characteristics he chooses.

So no, there is no possible argument other than such a being doesn't
exist or this god wouldn't do that, so you are back to belief.

This is generically known as "last Thursdayism" and has another more
official name of "Omphalism" that gets its name from a fancy term for
belly button.

It's an insidious notion. If you posit that the evidence of age
could have been created rather than actually grown that way through
the time it appears to have done, then you have a problem. How do
you know *you* existed last Thursday? Or yesterday? Or a half hour
ago? You *could* have been created with all those memories exactly
correct to make you *think* you existed in the past. If a deity could
and would fake such things as huge quantities of fossils, diverse
genetic information, etc. etc., then why couldn't such a deity fake
your own memory?

In fact, you don't even have to be continuous. Maybe it's easier for
a deity to let you exist on every alternate second leap year, and let
other entities have existence on some kind of time share. So, you
might exist for a second, then not exist for a few years, then exist
again for a second with only the memory of the years in between. How
would you ever possibly know? If an entity exists with the ability to
create light from stars that *APPEARS* billions of years old, and to
do so effectively instantly, why shouldn't such an entity be able to
create you with the memory of having existed a half hour ago?

The only real answer to such notions is: They don't belong in science
because they are not applicable to the jobs and tasks of science.
Because there isn't really any way to predict anything from them,
or test them. If you posit an arbitrarily powerful entity that can
do such tricks, then as long as that entity chooses not to let us
know about him, (or remember knowing about him) then there's not a
damn thing we can ever do with the notion.
Socks


Yes. Another problem with the appearance of age/omphalism type of
argument is that it implies that the deity is being deliberately
deceitful - i.e planting false evidence.

LK.

wrote:
In sci.physics Murf wrote:

Hello everybody,

Last week I was wandering the shops during my office lunch break when
I was harassed by a religeous zealot selling magazines and CDS.

Feeling argumentative I asked him whether he was (1) a creationalist
and (2) a "Young Universe" creationalist - i.e. one who believes that
dinosaurs etc didnt exist and that the universe is about 4,500 years
old...

When he replied that, yes, he didnt believe in evolution, dinosaurs
(and women's rights I assume) I suggested that he was a little
misguided.

In evidence I said "how come you can see all of the stars at night
then? After all, many of them are clearly more than 4,500 light years
away?"

He told me that "astronomy is a souless science - they lie to you".

Hmmph. He was obviously a ****, but is my line of arguemnt sound -
i.e. that you can see (or even detect) stars more than say 10,000
lightyears away a robust argument against a "young" view of
creation/existance?

If you posit an infinitely powerful god, he could blink the stars,
light, and dinosaur bones into existence at any time with any
characteristics he chooses.

You do not let them posit the existance of any god. Require them to
establish the existence of a god first and then one with the specific
characteristics needed for creation as they claim it occurred. Do not
permit circular arguments of the god-creation-world-god kind.

So no, there is no possible argument other than such a being doesn't
exist or this god wouldn't do that, so you are back to belief.

Hang out on talk.origins. It is rather easy to deal with them. It is
also a good place to see what happens when you depart from the same
rules you would apply when questioning any claim in any real science.

--
Should all countries imitate Israel and have
jews-only neighborhoods?
-- The Iron Webmaster, 3266