My Problem with Creation Science

[Yorzhik]

I'm not claiming that they're really that old! I'm only claiming that all the relevant PhDs (with a small minority of exceptions) say that all of their methods and instruments calculate that the dinosaur fossils are "millions of years" old.

Do you agree or not? Not with the content. But with that they are saying that content.

The small minority is correct. So we can either believe the truth or go along with the crowd bought by a handful of gatekeepers.

 

[Right Divider]

I'm not claiming that they're really that old! I'm only claiming that all the relevant PhDs (with a small minority of exceptions) say that all of their methods and instruments calculate that the dinosaur fossils are "millions of years" old.

Do you agree or not? Not with the content. But with that they are saying that content.

The "relevant PhD's"?

The majority believes falsehood. Why is this so surprising to you?

 

[Right Divider]

The small minority is correct.

Which happens a lot in science.

So we can either believe the truth or go along with the crowd bought by a handful of gatekeepers.

There is a "priesthood" of "billions of years" scientists.

 

[Yorzhik]

Well, true enough but any discussion about common descent or any other aspect of evolution jumps well past the point of how life began in the first place. When asked how life could have arrisen from lifelessness, the best answer you get from any evolutionists is "I don't know." and they think that such a response ends the debate. When confronted with the implications that come from the most basic laws of science they simply squeeze their eyes as tightly shut as they can and pretend that its a problem that some future generation will solve.

Yeah, it's a target rich environment. My son-in-law went to college for philosophy, so he honestly doesn't know what to do with the basic laws, so I use a different argument with him. I've got him to a point where he can at least realize that I'm not crazy and I have some good reasons to believe what I do. And that's foundational for all the philosophical types. My neighbor can't answer the basic laws problem, but at least now he realizes it's a problem - and that's foundational to his worldview.

 

[Clete]

There's no scripture licensing you or anybody else to consider yourself a Christian without being under the pastoral authority of your own bishop.

Argument from silence.

There is no scripture licensing the belief in electrons.
There is no scripture licensing the use of automobiles.
There is no scripture licensing of standing on one foot.
There is no scripture licensing of praying to Mary.
There is no scripture licensing of.....

fill in the blank!

 

[Stripe]

It's not. It's specifically correcting a notion where one's ecclesiology is thought to determine his or her or neither his nor her status with regard to God.

Can you name one person on TOL — a YEC creationist — who says that you must believe as they do to be saved?

Can you name one from anywhere?

That was my point. But in the Garden there was no life-container that had to die and get boiled in order for its soil to be fertile.

So you think God could not have created fertile soil without dead things, but He did make it look like dead things died in a flood and were frozen in stone.

OK.

Because I don't believe that all the dating methods used to calculate "billions of years" are wrong, even though I don't believe in "billions of years". So that means that our instruments and methods are telling us a story, a story that's written in the rocks. And so I'm just saying that the story written in the rocks is a fairy tale. God never explained why He wrote that story, so I could only guess.

Do you know how radiometric dating works? Do you know how radioactive material is generated? Do you know why it is concentrated in the continental crust on Earth?

The biggest problem I'm having is getting people to agree that almost all of the PhDs who are PhDs in relevant fields or domains, say that the fossils themselves are "millions of years" old.

Most people with doctorates would say that fossils are millions of years old.

What else do you want to agree on?

 

[Stripe]

Correctamundo, and I also subscribe to the other verses in 2nd Peter chapter three as well, like verses 10 and 12, we all Catholics believe in those verses, so I don't understand the position where Genesis chapter one and two are other than 2nd Peter 3:10 and 12. But, at the same time, I'm told to not worry about it, so I don't.

Do you know how to melt a planet?

 

[Right Divider]

Do you know how to melt a planet?

An extremely large stick match?

 

[Stripe]

An extremely large stick match?

A great big hole in the ground.

 

[Idolater]

Can you name one person on TOL — a YEC creationist — who says that you must believe as they do to be saved?

Can you name one from anywhere?

The universe is composed of particles. Particles are like the blurry edge between matter and energy. According to cosmologists, for every 20 parts of the universe, there is only one of them that is neither dark energy or dark matter.

Additionally, the universe is composed, elementally, of indeterminacy, so says QED, quantum electrodynamics, which is the modern term for what is known as particle physics and the Standard Model of the universe.

The above all depends upon something being a fact, that the universe is describable with a single theory of everything. If o t o h, it is false that the universe can be described this way, i o w if the universe is elementally indeterminate, then there can be no theory of everything, it's impossible because a theory of everything cannot allow for indeterminacy. Indeterminacy and coherent theory is in conflict.

But we know that Bell's Theorem is never denied whenever it is tested. The test is between determinacy and indeterminacy, and indeterminacy always is confirmed and determinacy is always denied. This leads to two potential facts, one is that the universe is composed elementally of indeterminacy, almost like there's a particle that is in itself indeterminacy. And the other is that there is a nonlocal hidden variable pulling strings as it were.

Science is incapable of distinguishing between these two potential facts, but we can at least think through what it would mean for either of them to be true. If indeterminacy is elemental to the universe then there can be no theory of everything ever. o t o h if a nonlocal hidden variable is pulling strings, then what on earth does that mean.

It means that science defines God, if He is real, as a nonlocal hidden variable, and as dark matter and dark energy.

We are all on the same side here. We all believe God is real. And so we all believe that the universe is not elementally composed of indeterminacy, but that instead God is pulling strings, and this is indistinguishable from the universe being elementally composed of indeterminacy. Indeterminacy is what we call this structural blindness in science.

So you think God could not have created fertile soil without dead things

Those are your words. Dead means it was alive at one point, and no, I don't think the soil bedding the Garden had anything dead in it, but I do think that it had what we would characterize as decayed or otherwise degraded organic matter, which after the creation, would be replaced with actual dead plant matter (God is the originator of "sustainability"). The organic content of soil is what makes it fertile, otherwise it's just bits of rock (sand, silt, clay).

, but He did make it look like dead things died in a flood and were frozen in stone.

I appreciate your view that dinosaur fossils were made during the flood, but I disagree with you. I just think that God made them when He made the earth. To tell a story. And the more I think of why He might want to tell this particular story, largely inaccessible to people until the last century, the more I'm considering that it is to bolster the case for His own reality and existence.

I fumbled the first paragraphs of this post to you, decided to just publish it anyway just to get it out there instead of fine-tune it more, but I'm trying to make the point that the interpretation of objective measurements that qualified scientists make results in a story, and the story is full of holes like indeterminacy and dark energy and dark matter, all of which stands in the way of ever developing their holy grail of a unified theory of everything that describes the universe completely, for example that the particles mediating the fundamental forces are all actually one particle, or that there is a natural nonlocal hidden variable rather than God pulling strings somehow.

The story requires us to believe that a large number of spectacularly unlikely events all occurred, almost stacked up on top of each other, such that while even one of them is inconceivably unlikely, it is akin to doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on improbability to believe the whole thing. It's why I say this story makes genuine fairy tales sound real. It makes the theory that God is real seem like the reasonable opinion, instead of the ignorant opinion, which is what scientists who promulgate this story in the rocks and in the stars assume.

OK.

Do you know how radiometric dating works? Do you know how radioactive material is generated? Do you know why it is concentrated in the continental crust on Earth?

I know that measurements are taken with instruments, and then a theory is applied to the measurements to calculate time duration. Do you doubt the measurements, or do you doubt the theory applied to the measurements?

Most people with doctorates would say that fossils are millions of years old.

It doesn't matter what doctors of medicine, law, literature, social sciences, math, and all the rest think here though, since the age of fossils is outside of their domains. The weight of what they all think is the same as mine and your view. We're all not cosmological PhDs. All I'm looking for is agreement that the great majority of doctors of the right domain would say it. Archeology, geology, and whatever other discipline is directly concerned with it.

What else do you want to agree on?

That when almost all of the pertinent PhDs teach that fossils are much older than I believe the earth is, that it is not just a hunch on their part, or their preference, but is based in objectivity. Then we can begin to cooperate on the unified Christian view of the matter. I think that if we can get past that all their measurements and theories and math suggests a "billions of years" old earth, and just accept that this is the story written in the rocks, which presumes a determinate universe, then we can retake this particular stage of public discourse. We are dismissed because we dismiss. When we stop dismissing, then maybe we will stop being dismissed.

 

[Idolater]

Do you know how to melt a planet?

Heat? A lot of heat. Why, is this your area of expertise? Melting planets? Who are you, Thanos?

 

[Right Divider]

The universe is composed of particles. Particles are like the blurry edge between matter and energy. According to cosmologists, for every 20 parts of the universe, there is only one of them that is neither dark energy or dark matter.

Once again, neither of these "dark things" has ever been observed. They were invented so that the "theory" could "live on". Do you recall that science is supposed to be about observations?

Additionally, the universe is composed, elementally, of indeterminacy, so says QED, quantum electrodynamics, which is the modern term for what is known as particle physics and the Standard Model of the universe.

You put way too much stock in the anti-Biblical "models".

It means that science defines God, if He is real, as a nonlocal hidden variable, and as dark matter and dark energy.

Science does not "define God". All of your text above was just gobbledygook.

Those are your words. Dead means it was alive at one point, and no, I don't think the soil bedding the Garden had anything dead in it, but I do think that it had what we would characterize as decayed or otherwise degraded organic matter, which after the creation, would be replaced with actual dead plant matter (God is the originator of "sustainability"). The organic content of soil is what makes it fertile, otherwise it's just bits of rock (sand, silt, clay).

Dude, once AGAIN, it's not the "organic content"... it's the CHEMICALS. They need not be "organic".

I appreciate your view that dinosaur fossils were made during the flood, but I disagree with you. I just think that God made them when He made the earth.

Again you push your silly opinion as something to be listened to. You've provided nothing, I repeat NOTHING, in the way of an argument supporting this idea.

To tell a story.

Indeed they do... it's a story of JUDGEMENT upon the world. They DIED during this JUDGEMENT.

That when almost all of the pertinent PhDs teach that fossils are much older than I believe the earth is, that it is not just a hunch on their part, or their preference, but is based in objectivity.

Utter nonsense. You really need to learn how radiometric dating works (or, in reality, does NOT work).

The "billions of years" is NOT, in any way, based on "objective" information. It's based on ASSUMPTIONS that have no foundation in fact. They are based on the big bang model and the wild assumptions about how the solar system and planets were formed. All of those models have huge and insurmountable problems. Problems that are generally ignored and swept under the rug.

Then we can begin to cooperate on the unified Christian view of the matter.

You are hilarious.

I think that if we can get past that all their measurements and theories and math suggests a "billions of years" old earth, and just accept that this is the story written in the rocks, which presumes a determinate universe, then we can retake this particular stage of public discourse. We are dismissed because we dismiss. When we stop dismissing, then maybe we will stop being dismissed.

You are talking yourself in circles.

 

[Stripe]

The above all depends upon something being a fact, that the universe is describable with a single theory of everything. If o t o h, it is false that the universe can be described this way, i o w if the universe is elementally indeterminate, then there can be no theory of everything, it's impossible because a theory of everything cannot allow for indeterminacy. Indeterminacy and coherent theory is in conflict.

I suspect that this is a false dichotomy, even though it does not appear to be.

Kurt Godel would probably have reservations about the universe being describable with a single scientific theory. I know I do. There is more to the universe than science.

It means that science defines God, if He is real, as a nonlocal hidden variable, and as dark matter and dark energy.

Even though I'm sorta uncomfortable with your way of describing things here, I understand where you're coming from. I prefer to view science in the sense that it is an approach to truth, not a delineator of it. When you ask science: What is God? it does not answer, because "it knows" that if you are practicing science, you've already made up your mind on who God is.

But all those words about science that we've written are not science, they're philosophy. I have a similar view on that: Philosophy is an approach to truth, not a delineator of it. When you ask it: What is God? it does not answer, because "philosophy knows" that if you are practicing it, you've already made up your mind on who God is.

Dead means it was alive at one point and no, I don't think the soil bedding the Garden had anything dead in it, but I do think that it had what we would characterize as decayed or otherwise degraded organic matter, which after the creation, would be replaced with actual dead plant matter (God is the originator of "sustainability"). The organic content of soil is what makes it fertile, otherwise it's just bits of rock (sand, silt, clay). I appreciate your view that dinosaur fossils were made during the flood, but I disagree with you. I just think that God made them when He made the earth. To tell a story. And the more I think of why He might want to tell this particular story, largely inaccessible to people until the last century, the more I'm considering that it is to bolster the case for His own reality and existence.

So you do believe that God created fertile soil without dead things and also made rocks with what looks like dead things in them.

This is a science thread. Do you have evidence for that second claim?

Because boy-oh-boy do we have evidence for them being made in the flood.

I know that measurements are taken with instruments, and then a theory is applied to the measurements to calculate time duration. Do you doubt the measurements, or do you doubt the theory applied to the measurements?

I would have a few questions about the measurements. However, it's not much good arguing over the data with someone who does not have a well-formed notion of where the goods came from.

It doesn't matter what doctors of medicine, law, literature, social sciences, math, and all the rest think here though, since the age of fossils is outside of their domains. The weight of what they all think is the same as mine and your view. We're all not cosmological PhDs. All I'm looking for is agreement that the great majority of doctors of the right domain would say it. Archeology, geology, and whatever other discipline is directly concerned with it.

Most of those in the right domain would say it.

That when almost all of the pertinent PhDs teach that fossils are much older than I believe the earth is, that it is not just a hunch on their part, or their preference, but is based in objectivity.

Why should you believe that?

Because they have degrees in the field?

I prefer to look at the evidence.

Then we can begin to cooperate on the unified Christian view of the matter.

That would require starting at God's word, not at the feet of a nebulous cloud of people with the right paperwork.

I think that if we can get past that all their measurements and theories and math suggests a "billions of years" old earth, and just accept that this is the story written in the rocks, which presumes a determinate universe, then we can retake this particular stage of public discourse. We are dismissed because we dismiss. When we stop dismissing, then maybe we will stop being dismissed.

I don't care about being dismissed. The story written in the rocks — the evidence — is overwhelmingly in favor of the history of the planet that the Bible plainly teaches.

Heat? A lot of heat. Why, is this your area of expertise? Melting planets? Who are you, Thanos?

I am inevitable.

What is the best way to generate heat?

 

[Clete]

I suspect that this is a false dichotomy, even though it does not appear to be.

Kurt Godel would probably have reservations about the universe being describable with a single scientific theory. I know I do. There is more to the universe than science.

Even though I'm sorta uncomfortable with your way of describing things here, I understand where you're coming from. I prefer to view science in the sense that it is an approach to truth, not a delineator of it. When you ask science: What is God? it does not answer, because "it knows" that if you are practicing science, you've already made up your mind on who God is.

But all those words about science that we've written are not science, they're philosophy. I have a similar view on that: Philosophy is an approach to truth, not a delineator of it. When you ask it: What is God? it does not answer, because "philosophy knows" that if you are practicing it, you've already made up your mind on who God is.

So you do believe that God created fertile soil without dead things and also made rocks with what looks like dead things in them.

This is a science thread. Do you have evidence for that second claim?

Because boy-oh-boy do we have evidence for them being made in the flood.

I would have a few questions about the measurements. However, it's not much good arguing over the data with someone who does not have a well-formed notion of where the goods came from.


Most of those in the right domain would say it.

Why should you believe that?

Because they have degrees in the field?

I prefer to look at the evidence.

That would require starting at God's word, not at the feet of a nebulous cloud of people with the right paperwork.


I don't care about being dismissed. The story written in the rocks — the evidence — is overwhelmingly in favor of the history of the planet that the Bible plainly teaches.



I am inevitable.

What is the best way to generate heat?

Excellent post! I'm not going to respond to it all as I'm not wanting to disrupt your conversation with Idolator. I just want to focus on the two highlighted sentences in first part of your post. I'll quote them here for easy reference...

I prefer to view science in the sense that it is an approach to truth, not a delineator of it.​

Philosophy is an approach to truth, not a delineator of it.​

It depends on just what you mean by those two statements, but taken at face value I think I'd have to disagree with you. The proper use of man's mind (i.e. sound reason) is his only means of understanding anything. All truth that anyone understands, including that which comes through divine revelation or instinct or whatever, must come in a manner that engages the person's mind. Science and philosophy are not truly two different things. Philosophy is the science that studies the fundamental nature of existence and of knowledge itself. They are both (supposed to be) the application of reason toward a particular topic. The topic is often different and the trail the logic takes is often different but at the end of the day, both science and philosophy are still man's mind applying the discipline of reason in an attempt to get answers to the questions around us. The goal in both pursuits is the truth. Any other goal turns them into something other than science and philosophy.

Clete

P.S. As usual, there was a lot more I wanted to say but that's the gist of it and I'm out of time!

 

[JudgeRightly]

Can you name one person on TOL — a YEC creationist — who says that you must believe as they do to be saved?

Can you name one from anywhere?

The universe is composed of particles. Particles are like the blurry edge between matter and energy. According to cosmologists, for every 20 parts of the universe, there is only one of them that is neither dark energy or dark matter.

Additionally, the universe is composed, elementally, of indeterminacy, so says QED, quantum electrodynamics, which is the modern term for what is known as particle physics and the Standard Model of the universe.

The above all depends upon something being a fact, that the universe is describable with a single theory of everything. If o t o h, it is false that the universe can be described this way, i o w if the universe is elementally indeterminate, then there can be no theory of everything, it's impossible because a theory of everything cannot allow for indeterminacy. Indeterminacy and coherent theory is in conflict.

But we know that Bell's Theorem is never denied whenever it is tested. The test is between determinacy and indeterminacy, and indeterminacy always is confirmed and determinacy is always denied. This leads to two potential facts, one is that the universe is composed elementally of indeterminacy, almost like there's a particle that is in itself indeterminacy. And the other is that there is a nonlocal hidden variable pulling strings as it were.

Science is incapable of distinguishing between these two potential facts, but we can at least think through what it would mean for either of them to be true. If indeterminacy is elemental to the universe then there can be no theory of everything ever. o t o h if a nonlocal hidden variable is pulling strings, then what on earth does that mean.

It means that science defines God, if He is real, as a nonlocal hidden variable, and as dark matter and dark energy.

We are all on the same side here. We all believe God is real. And so we all believe that the universe is not elementally composed of indeterminacy, but that instead God is pulling strings, and this is indistinguishable from the universe being elementally composed of indeterminacy. Indeterminacy is what we call this structural blindness in science.

Those are your words. Dead means it was alive at one point, and no, I don't think the soil bedding the Garden had anything dead in it, but I do think that it had what we would characterize as decayed or otherwise degraded organic matter, which after the creation, would be replaced with actual dead plant matter (God is the originator of "sustainability"). The organic content of soil is what makes it fertile, otherwise it's just bits of rock (sand, silt, clay).

I appreciate your view that dinosaur fossils were made during the flood, but I disagree with you. I just think that God made them when He made the earth. To tell a story. And the more I think of why He might want to tell this particular story, largely inaccessible to people until the last century, the more I'm considering that it is to bolster the case for His own reality and existence.

I fumbled the first paragraphs of this post to you, decided to just publish it anyway just to get it out there instead of fine-tune it more, but I'm trying to make the point that the interpretation of objective measurements that qualified scientists make results in a story, and the story is full of holes like indeterminacy and dark energy and dark matter, all of which stands in the way of ever developing their holy grail of a unified theory of everything that describes the universe completely, for example that the particles mediating the fundamental forces are all actually one particle, or that there is a natural nonlocal hidden variable rather than God pulling strings somehow.

The story requires us to believe that a large number of spectacularly unlikely events all occurred, almost stacked up on top of each other, such that while even one of them is inconceivably unlikely, it is akin to doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on improbability to believe the whole thing. It's why I say this story makes genuine fairy tales sound real. It makes the theory that God is real seem like the reasonable opinion, instead of the ignorant opinion, which is what scientists who promulgate this story in the rocks and in the stars assume.

I know that measurements are taken with instruments, and then a theory is applied to the measurements to calculate time duration. Do you doubt the measurements, or do you doubt the theory applied to the measurements?

It doesn't matter what doctors of medicine, law, literature, social sciences, math, and all the rest think here though, since the age of fossils is outside of their domains. The weight of what they all think is the same as mine and your view. We're all not cosmological PhDs. All I'm looking for is agreement that the great majority of doctors of the right domain would say it. Archeology, geology, and whatever other discipline is directly concerned with it.

That when almost all of the pertinent PhDs teach that fossils are much older than I believe the earth is, that it is not just a hunch on their part, or their preference, but is based in objectivity. Then we can begin to cooperate on the unified Christian view of the matter. I think that if we can get past that all their measurements and theories and math suggests a "billions of years" old earth, and just accept that this is the story written in the rocks, which presumes a determinate universe, then we can retake this particular stage of public discourse. We are dismissed because we dismiss. When we stop dismissing, then maybe we will stop being dismissed.

You never answered Stripe's question, Idol. Perhaps it's not too relevant, but I know I find it annoying when people don't answer the questions I ask.

 

[Right Divider]

You never answered Stripe's question, Idol. Perhaps it's not too relevant, but I know I find it annoying when people don't answer the questions I ask.

He has also refused to provide any support for his claim (multiple times) that God created dead bones in the ground.

 

[Idolater]

I suspect that this is a false dichotomy, even though it does not appear to be.

I don't see how, but I welcome your argument. Indeterminacy is either elemental to the universe or it is not, but regardless, we can't tell the difference between it being elemental to the universe or a nonlocal hidden variable pulling strings. And in either case, there can be no unified theory that fully describes the universe. Show me where I'm wrong, or committing any fallacy.

Kurt Godel would probably have reservations about the universe being describable with a single scientific theory. I know I do. There is more to the universe than science.

And science itself says as much. Indeterminacy is what prompts the philosophical interpretations like "multiple universes". We don't have any evidence of multiple universes, we have evidence that is inconsistent with determinacy.

Even though I'm sorta uncomfortable with your way of describing things here, I understand where you're coming from.

I think it's extremely interesting to think about it this way. We both agree that science here is blind as a bat, so when the scientists are forced to tell the truth, when they think that "nobody's looking," such as when they think that, what they're saying couldn't possibly bear on their conflict with the Bible and the plain reading of Genesis, this is what they say, that God is a nonlocal hidden variable and dark matter and dark energy. These are the gaps in science, and we both also know that these are such catastrophic cracks if science were an edifice, that science is less stable than a house of cards in a hurricane. Or in a typhoon, as it were.

But nonetheless, when human ingenuity is applied to much of the content or the propositions of science, it quickly sorts itself out between the practical (the reason for the great increase in the common wealth since the Reformation) and the irrelevant. I fear that so many Christians have consigned cosmology to the latter category, and when faced with people like you and I who actually think a great deal about cosmology, that we are summarily dismissed. It's not a hill that they feel is worth dying upon.

But certainly the science that has and that will lead to increasing common wealth and health, isn't going away, and shouldn't. This category of scientific knowledge or propositions is science's bottom-line value to mankind. Its cosmological content or propositions, are not in that category. Whatever science teaches in this domain doesn't contribute to our common wealth and health. In fact it mostly defies it.

I prefer to view science in the sense that it is an approach to truth, not a delineator of it. When you ask science: What is God? it does not answer, because "it knows" that if you are practicing science, you've already made up your mind on who God is.

But all those words about science that we've written are not science, they're philosophy. I have a similar view on that: Philosophy is an approach to truth, not a delineator of it. When you ask it: What is God? it does not answer, because "philosophy knows" that if you are practicing it, you've already made up your mind on who God is.

Like with ethics and morals, there just isn't one authoritative conception of the distinction between philosophy and science, where they overlap, where and how they integrate together, where one leaves off and the other picks up. I myself think of them as largely identical, with measurement being the distinguishing feature between them. Viz., if you feed philosophy measurements, you wind up with science.

But where you say that words written about science are not science, that's what I think too. Because (according to me) science begins with measurement, and philosophy does not require any measurements to proceed, science is more exclusive and philosophy is more inclusive. So whatever science cannot address, there philosophy is. And things that are above or over science are where philosophy maintains total intellectual dominion, and words about science are above or over science.

So you do believe that God created fertile soil without dead things and also made rocks with what looks like dead things in them.

If you were to examine the fertile soil it would look like dead things. In fact perhaps the best soil of all (this is hypothetical) includes not only sand, silt and clay, but also some diatomaceous earth, which are fossils of tiny creatures, and God would have made that perfect soil with the diatom fossils in situ too. What I am saying is that Eden's soil had what would have looked to us today to be organic material produced from plant material that had died and decomposed or degraded in order to be optimally available for the plants' roots that He had just made.

This is a science thread. Do you have evidence for that second claim?

There's no such thing as science that isn't also philosophy. The concern of philosophy is the same as science, truth. Truth is factual. Facts are true propositions or statements or sentences or thoughts or ideas. I have no evidence that Eden even existed, let alone that its soil contained what would appear to us today to be compost or humus. I hope you agree that we have no evidence that Eden ever existed. But we certainly have no evidence that fossils were created by God in situ. We don't have any evidence that God created Adam and Eve fully grown and mature either.

Because boy-oh-boy do we have evidence for them being made in the flood.

Please explain, and I'm being genuine.

I would have a few questions about the measurements. However, it's not much good arguing over the data with someone who does not have a well-formed notion of where the goods came from.

My position is that it's not worth arguing about the story that they're telling us from their measurements, but that it is worth arguing whether that story is true. And they have no leg to stand on when the discussion goes this way. It's entirely a matter of interpretation, as to whether the story they're saying is written in the rocks and in the stars, is actually true. And there's no PhDs in this interpretive domain. All our views are of equal authority. My view is that the story is fantastically improbable, and patently so. And again my opponents have no leg to stand on in retort. There's nothing they can do to argue that it's more likely than it appears, because the improbability is elemental to the story they're telling us is written in the rocks and in the stars. It's almost as if it's by design, ironically, that it's so improbable that we can't honestly believe it's a nonfiction account. What would punch through this otherwise basically impenetrable fortress of improbability, would be something like God, a nonlocal hidden variable pulling strings.

Most of those in the right domain would say it.

Why should you believe that?

Because they have degrees in the field?

I prefer to look at the evidence.

I'm not an expert, so at some point I have to yield to experts where experts already exist. This isn't to say I have to be unthinkingly spoon-fed whatever the experts tell me is the truth, but that where their domain is categorically different from philosophy, where in one way there are no experts, I just take their word for it. I gather from the tone of this thread that people think I take what PhD geologists for example say, about philosophical matters, as true, but no. I take what they say on geological matters as true (i o w if the appeal to authority is valid), but that doesn't weigh on theological matters, and, if it does appear to weigh on theological matters, then they are outside of their area of expertise, and their views are no weightier than mine or your view. But if I am mistaken in thinking that their views weigh on theology but they really don't, then it's my duty to sort out that problem myself, and if I try to argue that they are overstepping geology, and I am wrong about that, then there must be a coherent explanation that resolves the apparent conflict, that is all on my side. My personal answer to this, is to seek a common ground between a plain reading of Genesis, with a plain reading of nature. I trust the PhDs in the right domain to tell me the plain reading of nature, and compare that with the plain reading of Genesis. The solution that's still working for me, is that the story written in nature is of the fantasy genre. Which is perfectly balanced with what most who believe that story, tell me is also the nature of the plain reading of Genesis. We both believe in apparently fantasy, so the question is, which one is more believable. And that's a question of faith, which is unsurprising and comfortable for us Christians, though it could be uncomfortable for atheists to realize.

That would require starting at God's word, not at the feet of a nebulous cloud of people with the right paperwork.

I did that. That's where I start.

I don't care about being dismissed.

That's evident. And I don't care about being dismissed either, but being dismissed does mean that you're not going to advance your ideas. It doesn't mean therefore that your idea must be false, it's just a fact.

The story written in the rocks — the evidence — is overwhelmingly in favor of the history of the planet that the Bible plainly teaches.

So I need to point out a distinction between evidence and the story. The story is apart from evidence, alongside of it. The story is either consistent with the evidence, or it isn't, and vice versa. For example the evidence we have and the story of Christ's Resurrection are not the same thing. But the story is consistent with the evidence.

In geology or archeology I trust the PhDs to tell me a story that is consistent with the evidence. I have no geological or archeological or cosmological expertise to argue with them, but I also have no reason to think that they are incentivized to lie: that the story is inconsistent with the evidence, but that they're telling me otherwise.

And to repeat, please inform me of the evidence that you think is inconsistent with fossils being "millions of years" old.

I am inevitable.

l o l nice.

What is the best way to generate heat?

The best way, the only way, according to the story science is telling us, is that you don't generate heat at all, that all the heat that's ever going to be, already exists somewhere, in another form perhaps (fuel for example).

So the best way to generate heat is for God to create it ex nihilo. But if you need a ton of heat, and a very large heat density, I would say some form of either nuclear fusion, or if possible annihilating antimatter and matter?

What do you think?

 

[Right Divider]

So the best way to generate heat is for God to create it ex nihilo.

You mean like the way that He created dead animal bones in the ground?

 

[Idolater]

You mean like the way that He created dead animal bones in the ground?

What's your point.

 

[Idolater]

Science and philosophy are not truly two different things.

I agree. Philosophy precedes science chronologically and logically. Science requires philosophy, and not the other way around. Science became its own distinct discipline from philosophy, gradually I think at first, kind of beginning as philosophy of nature or natural philosophy.

Philosophy is the science that studies the fundamental nature of existence and of knowledge itself.

And ethics and morality too. Politics. Law. On the latter, philosophy isn't concerned with law practice, but with what law is, what law should be, such things.