Beliefs can prompt hypotheses, e.g. “I believe that galloping glaciers occur because of properties of glacial loess”. But once a hypothesis is stated, beliefs are not part of the picture.
Why YECists don’t grasp this I don’t understand.
The other choice is believing that God is a liar – a conclusion reached by quite a number of people after listening to YEC evangelism efforts in my university days.
1 Corinthians 2:1-5: “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified … not on men’s words, but on the God’s power” ESV
Adding stumbling blocks like mandating the centrality of some other belief is against Paul’s demonstrated and confessed mission.
Not only is there not plenty, there is not little, but there is not a shred of science that stands up to scrutiny in support of the AiG view.
Why would I? It is full of error and not remotely compelling.
Any other view than what? That the data should support the conclusions? That effects that negate the outcome cannot be just ignored? That references should actually faithfully represent what quoted authors intended? That a paper should advance understanding? Flat earthers have difficulty getting their work into peer review as well, for the same reasons as YEC.
Those AiG apologists who have state university granted PhD level achievement are indeed peddling pseudoscience. The claim of a six thousand year old earth is what is ridiculous.
Science does not make religious claims, but neither does it care in the least if scientific results are inconvenient to your theology. The earth continued to move when Galileo was forced to recant.
There is lots of data…go and read it for yourself. AIG, Creation ministries, the SDA Church universities and a whole heap of resources are available for finding said data.
We both know that mostly YEC and TEists largely use the same data…its not different in that way.
Again the peoblem remains, the Christian church founding father (apostle Peter says)
Peter states the above very clearly as a matter of HISTORICAL FACT!
Because of what the apostle Peter has written, nothing any one publishes contrary to those statements from Peter are authoritative…they are theological heresy.
I dont see any way around what the apostle Peter wrote. Givennthe Christian church was founded under his leadership, one cannot claim his doctrines are open to interpretation.
Also, Peter claims he recieved his revelation about the above from writings of the prophets (inc Moses), Christs ministry, and from God directly (of which visions are almost certainly a method God used to communicate to him)
Why should that matter? Are you now using moral reasoning to claim statistics prove what the apostle Peter wrote is wrong?
We have an example of what God thinks about human moral reasoning…
The prophet Samuel said to king Saul…to obey is better than to sacrifice.
The YEC position as I understand it is that the DNA for all of the later traits was present in the original, but circumstances determined what would be expressed. So their definition of diversity lies in the amount of possibilities in a set of DNA where epigenetics determines what gets expressed. The trouble with this is that if it’s epigenetics that determines which set of genetic plans gets expressed then it should be possible that a cheetah under some circumstances give birth to Main coon cat, or a Persian could give birth to a lion.
So the two positions are talking past each other: the one is defining diversity as the result of divergence while the other is defining it as a library of sets of characteristics each of which will result in a different variety or species.
Ouch – good point!
In this connection I’ll note that Jesus didn’t say, “Come to Me but learn the concepts from Genesis first”, He said, “Come to M all who are weary and heavy-burdened”.
A good example is “Lying Lisle”, so called because most of what he argues isn’t science at all, it’s special pleading for a certain set of metaphysics.
Yep. Jesus once noted that the rocks would cry out the truth (a theme verse one of my geology professors used). The rocks of the Himalaya ‘cry out’ that those mountains are at the very least hundreds of thousands of years old – and there are no assumptions about age involved, only measuring deformation of the rocks and comparing that to what has been measured in the lab concerning how fast rocks can bend without disrupting the structure.
It’s ridiculous from the standpoint of the text, too: nothing in the Old Testament when read as what it is gives any basis for estimating an age of the Earth – even if those Hebrew scholars who concluded from the text that the universe is incomprehensibly ancient an the Earth uncountably old are correct. Indeed the fact that serious scholars concluded that from the text should make anyone who thinks that an age can be determined from the scriptures stop and reconsider.
One of the rabbis I knew while in grad school laughed when we said since rabbis count the year from Adam they must believe in a young Earth; they said they know the Creation stories aren’t literal, using that dating system is just traditional.
You mean in 2 Peter? He never even mentions “satan and his angels”.
Since he doesn’t even write about one of your items, this assertion fails.
I don’t either – but what he actually wrote and what you claim are not the same.
It matters because it shows that YEC drives people from Christ while TE does not in fact “bring Christianity into disrepute”. What TE apparently does is remove the obvious conclusion from YEC that God must be a liar.
If it’s so available - why haven’t you been able to find any of it? It’s no good just gesturing vaguely in some direction and declaring that your hoped-for data is just “somewhere in there.” There is a reason you’re unwilling to be specific about this alleged data - because it doesn’t exist, and you know it, because you go on to suggest …
Which makes it now … all about interpretation - at least as far as wanting to make it shake out against anything you’ve been told not to like. There is at least some truth to that, but not any truth with near the elasticity that YECs would like it to have. Not all interpretations of evidence are equal. Some follow the bulk of the data and do a reasonable job explaining what we see (these are called ‘theories’), others are forced to ignore or marginalize mountains of data in order to preserve conclusions they deemed precious to them beforehand, making them ideologies rather than scientific theories. YEC is a solid example of ideology - and a religiously motivated one at that, which tends to much of it deeper into cult territory when it usurps the gospel and tries to replace Christ with a different cornerstone.
The differences in phenotype reflect differences in genotype, and while phylogenic trees can be constructed to demonstrate common ancestry, differences between related species are due to mutation since divergence and not epigenetics or other spectral apparitions in the chromosomes. There is junk DNA, but no excess ready to go cargo just waiting in reserve for a condition to be useful. As geological timescales are consistent with the rates of mutation observed, speciation and diversity observed is as expected by typical mechanisms.
Creationists like to portray scientists as holding that evolution can do anything, but this is not the way it is. Evolution is as much about constraint as possibility. Our origins and ancestry severely limit the available variation, so winged humans will not be soaring with the pterosaurs anytime soon. YEC, however, has painted itself into a corner where they need a means for variation at a ferocious pace oblivious to any requirement of time, to account for what is in many cases hundreds of species in a given kind to arise in a few generations. A protocat walks off the ark gangplank and become great granddad to a cheetah and a house cat, even when they live in the same place under the same circumstances. So while YEC has lately been trending to some sort of directed mutation, they are still stumped for a mechanism and rather suggest more research is needed.
Oh but we have. I do not disagree for lack of familiarity.
Data is not neutral. The point of science is to obtain data that supports or negates a hypothesis. Evidence favors a conclusion, that is why it is called evidence.
When it’s not about lies, which are necessary to get young geology.
This was one of my frustrations with “YEC evangelism” as I encountered it: they were more concerned about convincing people that the first Genesis Creation account was scientifically correct than talking about Jesus!
I think that’s where the “DNA library” concept came from: if God put all those different genomes into the DNA of the original “kind”, they regard the problem as solved . . . despite having created several new ones.
To me it’s like a game of “What if?” where any idea that seems to fit sort of pops up and there’s an “Ooh – shiny!” sort of reaction where the idea is grabbed without being examined first.
I gave up on SDA sources when I realized that their entire theology rests on one person’s interpretation(s) of scripture, since that is contrary to scripture.
Reading things at AIG always brings to mind the show Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? because most of what I find there doesn’t pass that test.
I am a Christian…of course I am arguing the philosophical view and that is exactly the point. How can a Muslim be a Muslim if they do not follow the Koran?
What i do not understand is how other individuals who claim to be Christian do not follow its fundamentals?
The red flag for me here is when i read stuff like “Adam doesnt follow science”. Mine is not special pleading St Roymond…its what God expects of us it seems to me that the habit here instead is straw pluck only those things that suit your observational habits. There are many examples in the bible where people were caught out because of exactly that same habit…take the following example:
Luke 17:26-30
New King James Version
26 And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: 27 They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. 28 Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; 29 but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. 30 Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.
You know what interesting about the above text from Luke? Its strangely familiar given my previous argument (that you call special pleading) from the apostle Peter…
2 Peter 2: 1Now there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. 2Many will follow in their depravity, and because of them the way of truth will be defamed. 3In their greed, these false teachers will exploit you with deceptive words. The longstanding verdict against them remains in force, and their destruction does not sleep.
4For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them deep into hell,a placing them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment; 5if He did not spare the ancient world when He brought the flood on its ungodly people, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, among the eight; 6if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction,b reducing them to ashes as an example of what is coming on the ungodly;c 7and if He rescued Lot, a righteous man distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless 8(for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— 9if all this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment.
Here we have two apostles who were contemporaries both claiming a literal reading of Moses writings in the book of Genesis (specifically the flood and Sodom and Gomorah)
Instead of coming at me with moral arguments…deny my arguments with bible texts or id suggest there is no option but to accept them. I regularly post the appropriate bible bible texts you should study them in good conscience.
What is really interesting…I am yet to see anyone prove my quotes from 2 Peter false using other bible texts. You are an educated man St Roymond…put that scholarly brain of yours to good use and show theologically that the YEC doctrine here is wrong please.
The argument “God left these physical evidences for us to find” (fossil record and radiometric dating etc) simply doesnt add up. It does not explain why God would tell us one thing in His inspired Word, that is completely at odds with the physical evidence? What this actually proves is that the physical evidences are corruptible and have been corrupted by Satan and, secular interpretation of those evidences has clouded the judgement of a multitude of seemingly God fearing individuals such that they are blind to Gods Word and don’t even realise it. It reminds me of an appropriate text here:
Matthew 24:23-25
21st Century King James Version
23 Then if any man shall say unto you, ‘Lo, here is Christ,’ or ‘there,’ believe it not.
24 For there shall arise false christs and false prophets and shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
And factually credible–a case that I have to work through frequently is that most of Edward Petuch’s bibliography isn’t peer-reviewed because he’s an under-careful hyper-splitter who relies too much on memory, makes frequent errors, and rarely fixes them. There’s one book where he talks about the ecology and paleoenvironment of a variety of layers in the southeastern US, and in the sections about the Waccamaw and James City Formations, he manages the spectacular feat of having every sentence about the environment be completely wrong in ways that are utterly obvious to anyone who has actually examined the deposits.
Present it.
Then show us. For example, show us how they use the spectrum of substitution mutations to demonstrate any of their claims.
Testing Common Ancestry: It’s All About the Mutations
So it is actually YEC’s who are guilty of not considering the views of others. This is further supported by AiG’s own statements:
“No apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field of study, including science, history, and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the clear teaching of Scripture obtained by historical-grammatical interpretation.”–Answers in Genesis
You accuse scientists of ignoring data, but can’t point to any data that they are ignoring. You claim that scientists refuse to consider other beliefs or views, yet the very organization you reference states outright that they refuse to consider the views of beliefs of others, or even evidence that contradicts their beliefs.
Physician, heal thyself.
“Projection is the process of displacing one’s feelings onto a different person, animal, or object. The term is most commonly used to describe defensive projection—attributing one’s own unacceptable urges to another.”
Projection
You claimed that you were making a scientific argument.
They don’t follow your interpretation of the Bible because it is contradicted by reality.
The same conundrum Cardinal Bellarmine found himself in.
“But to want to affirm that the Sun, in very truth, is at the centre of the universe and only rotates on its axis without traveling from east to west, and that the Earth is situated in the third sphere and revolves very swiftly around the Sun, is a very dangerous attitude and one calculated not only to arouse all Scholastic philosophers and theologians but also to injure our holy faith by contradicting the Scriptures….”–Cardinal Bellarmine
However, he was able to understand his own fallibility which seems to be a trait you are missing.
" Third, I say that, if there were a real proof that the Sun is in the centre of the universe, that the Earth is in the third sphere, and that the Sun does not go round the Earth but the Earth round the Sun, then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of Scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and we should rather have to say that we did not understand them than declare an opinion to be false which is proved to be true."-ibid.
Perhaps what you call fundamental is not the universal definition?
Having a certain view of Scripture is not fundamental. It is personal.
Richard
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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