All science must ultimately agree with observation. While “historical science” is a applicable label in a trivial sense, evidence of past processes are not exempt from observational rigor.
Observation generally means careful measurement. The instrumentation of science fuels discovery, which in turn advances instrumentation. We can now sample DNA in dirt, detect the polarization of light from black holes, and measure the magnetic moment of electrons to fantastic precision. That exactness of data provides means to test scientific ideas. As @jammycakes points out, honesty in measurement began with a proper balance scale, and the principle extends to all the instruments of science.
Historical science is similar to much of science which cannot be directly seen. No one has ever directly seen a neutrino. Has anyone ever been there in the core of the sun? But scientists always knew that the creationist claim that nuclear fusion was not responsible for the heat of the sun was disingenuous, because that claim was not based on scientifically established principles, but rather on zealotry for a young earth.
Absolutely. That is why archeological samples are often sent to different dating laboratories to cross validate results. The methods and materials section of journal papers are nothing but empirical. Historical science is as empirical and peer reviewed as any area of investigation.
This really doesn’t say anything. Is that not exactly what you would expect? The Bible is an ancient document that is what it has been for two thousand years. Science is always making new discoveries and refining ideas, and a current text will be up to date. But in the main these changes are details. Do you expect the witchcraft hypothesis of disease to make a comeback? the idea of infinitely divisible matter to gain support? the latest revision of an earth science textbook to recant a spherical planet? Be assured that an ancient earth will remain in textbooks indefinitely, because we cannot unknow the incontrovertible evidence detailing its history.
The Earth rotates.
Day and night occur simultaneously on different parts of the Earth.
The Genesis writer knew nothing of this “the earth is spherical” and “day and night occur simultaneously on different part of the earth”. The cosmology of the writer if the first Creation story was a universe full of water where dry land existed because God had pushed the waters aside and put a solid dome over it.
And that’s the problem with YEC: they won’t let the scripture be what it is, they demand that it be something they can understand without having to do the work of studying to understand what the Creation accounts are.
I vaguely recall contemplating smacking a gal in a Bible study who loved using that to shut down discussion and examination of a passage. If it had been a guy I might have gone ahead.
But my response to “God works in a mysterious way” is “Yes, He respected His chosen writers enough to let them write in their own language using literary forms they were familiar with and applying the elements of their worldview”.
The Bible’s demands for accurate and honest measurements apply to every context in which measurement is used. No exceptions, no excuses. They apply whether buying and selling is involved or not. They apply whether cheating other people in transactions is involved or not. To suggest otherwise is to demand the right to tell lies, and if that’s what you’re doing (as no less than fourteen other young earthists have done before you) then I’m not just insinuating anything; I’m stating it as a fact. Not having accurate and honest measurements is lying, by definition.
Determining the age of the earth and the ages of rock strata involves measuring things. Determining who did or did not evolve from what involves measuring things. Determining where, when or how extensive Noah’s Flood could have been involves measuring things. Studying the historical sciences involves measuring things. Therefore Deuteronomy 25:13-16 applies to those subjects. Period. End of story. It’s not up for discussion. Your choice is simple: accept it and obey it, or be considered a liar.
And no, you can’t just refute something by saying “I refute that.” If you want to refute something then you must provide evidence and sound reasoning to back up your refutation. Otherwise you’re just shouting into the wind.
The fact remains that God has created physical evidence in the world that we live in. That physical evidence contains attributes that can be measured, such as the amount of lead in zircon crystals for example. Those measurements are not consistent with a six thousand year old earth and cannot be reconciled with a six thousand year old earth in any way, shape or form. Attempts to do so consistently break just about every rule of accurate and honest weights and measurements that I’m aware of, often in very blatant and egregious ways. If you want to challenge that assertion then we’ll need to drill down into specifics, and you will need to justify the young earthists’ approach to measurement in accordance with the rules and principles by which measurement operates, but I’ve done an in-depth study of Answers in Genesis’s top ten claims of evidence for a young earth to get you started:
Actually, the flood as described in the Bible is about water rising. There is nothing there at all about sedimentary formations and the landscape being reshaped. In fact, there is continuity of reference to geography such as the Euphrates River. As described in the Bible.
I know nothing of a flat Earth belief. I certainly do not believe that the Earth is flat.
I do wonder somewhat about what verses in the Bible are used by followers of Biologos beliefs to support the belief that people in the day that Genesis was written believed that the Earth was flat.
I do believe that people way back in ancient times around about three thousand years ago, were extremely intelligent, capable people that would run rings around us so called modern humans today.
If they had the collective knowledge that we have today, the difference between them and us would be apparent, and we would be the ones with the lesser intellect and reasoning capacity.
I think they understood the creation very well, and certainly far better than many in the Biologos belief system camp give them credit for in their imaginations.
In contrast I think it is highly likely that the ancients knew very well that the Earth was a sphere, after all they viewed the moon and the sun as we still see them today as circles, it is not too hard to see that with high intellect as I am sure they had, they would have seen those circles as spheres or balls.
Take for example the passage, "It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain And spreads them out like a tent to live in. "Isaiah 40:22 NASB Notwithstanding the fact that the Holy Spirit inspired the author to write what he wrote, it is clear that they knew then that the Earth was a circle and it is highly likely in my opinion that the correct translation interpretation would be better rendered as globe or sphere.
Quoting Dominic Statham (Scientist and Chartered Engineer) on this matter:
The first line of Isaiah 40:22 reads, “It is he [i.e. God] who sits above the circle of the earth.” Some have argued from this that Scripture teaches the earth to be a flat disc, rather than a globe. However, even if the original Hebrew is correctly understood to refer to a circle, this doesn’t necessarily indicate something flat; a sphere appears as a circle when seen from above—and indeed from whatever direction it is viewed. Moreover, there is good reason to believe that the word translated ‘circle’ might be better translated ‘sphere’.
The Hebrew word in question is khûg (חוּג) which is also found in Job 22:14 where, in many Bible versions, it is translated ‘vault’. For example, the New American Standard Bible reads, “Clouds are a hiding place for Him, so that He cannot see; and He walks on the vault of heaven.” Clearly ‘vault’ carries the sense of something three-dimensional and is given as the primary meaning of khûg in the well-known Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Reference:Brown, F. et al., Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon: With an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Hendrikson Publishers, USA, p. 295, reprinted January 1999 from the 1906 edition; Strong's Hebrew: 2329. חוּג (chug) -- vault, horizon.
In modern Hebrew, a sphere is denoted by khûg, along with kaddur, galgal, and mazzal.
Reference: Ben-Yehuda, E. and Ben-Yehuda, D, Hebrew Dictionary, Pocket Books (Simon & Schuster), USA, p. 252, 1961.
In Arabic (another Semitic language), kura means ball and is the word used in the Van Dyck-Boustani Arabic Bible (1865) to translate khûg in (Isaiah 40:22)
Various sixteenth century Latin Bibles indicate that medieval scholars understood khûg in Isaiah 40:22 to refer to the sphericity of the earth. For example, Santes Pagnino translated this sphaera, and Benedictus Arias Montanus and François Vatable globus. The seventeenth century Giovanni Diodati Bible also used globus and the eighteenth century Dutch Hebraist Campeius Vitringa used orbis. Reference:John Gill’s Exposition of the Bible, footnote to [Isaiah 40:22]; biblestudytools.com.
More recently, the Spanish Jerusalem Bible used ‘orb’ and the Italian Riveduta Bible ‘globo’.
I would be most grateful if you would outline why you believe this is an important matter worth raising.
And totally clueless that “evening . . . morning” aren’t the boundaries of a day, they’re the boundaries of a night. In the ancient near east, night was an intrusion of darkness-chaos into the ordered Creation, something the gods had to fight against every time the sun went down in order that the sun could pass through the underworld and start another day. The use and repetition of the “evening . . . morning” motif drives home the point that the period of darkness called “night” is just another thing that YHWH-Elohim made for His purposes, not a manifestation of chaos that has to be defeated over and over.
They tend to just ignore the issue because it’s obvious that an Earth that’s a globe can’t be made to fit the worldview of the writer of the first Creation account. That writer’s Earth was a flat disc with dry land surrounded by waters on the sides, below the underworld, and above the solid dome overhead.
Even taking the account literally that’s a silly statement because we aren’t given a clue as to how long the Spirit meditated over the deep.
Statements like these make me wonder if the man has actually read the text, because the answer is fairly simple: the Adversary fell when he learned that these creatures made of dust were destined to outrank him and he resented it. At his first appearance he is already trying to take Yahweh’s place in the lives of humans by getting them to question what Yahweh had said and casting doubt on Yahweh’s integrity.
So what makes sense to you is actually correct.
Inspiration does not mean God took over the minds of His chosen writers. He respected them enough to let them write in ways that would actually communicate to the intended audience, i.e. using literary forms they were familiar with and working within their worldview.
Ah, good old circular reasoning – or just sheer arrogance, assuming that it isn’t necessary to study in order to understand.
There was no such genre as “historical narrative”, so it can’t be that. In fact the first Creation story is two ancient literary genres at once: ‘royal chronicle’ and ‘temple inauguration’ – and it has to be read that way or you throw out almost the entire message.
And since neither of those is history, the account cannot be history.
Honest translations always lose something in the translation, starting with the ancient literary type being used. As with any writing, unless you know the literary type you have no hope of understanding the writing regardless of how faithfully the translator chose his words.
It has nothing to do with trust, it has to do with how God relates to humans: He lets us be ourselves, which means He lets us write in ways that we understand.
Where is that written?
See, your very foundation isn’t found in the scripture – it relies on making stuff up that isn’t in the text.
“Christians who believe the clearly stated reality of Genesis” would be those who have enough respect for the Holy Spirit to recognize that He did not overrule the minds of His chosen writers but let them write in ways that would mean something to their audiences.
I set myself up as judge over those who arrogantly assume they can understand the scriptures without actually having to study because it’s my duty.
Because that’s what those Christians are doing – they’re reading a translation as though it was some simple form of literature they can understand without having to put any work in.
Yes – because the Creation stories were not meant as history; those Christians are imposing something on the text that is not found in it: nowhere is it written that the Old Testament scriptures are intended to be historically and scientifically accurate; that idea is imported. It’s a definition of truth that can’t be found in the scriptures anywhere but comes from scientific materialism.
Sorry, but that’s exactly what they do the moment they assert that the scriptures have to be scientifically and historically accurate to be true – that definition of truth does not come from the scriptures, it comes from scientific materialism.
I’m not interested in science. YEC operates by requiring the scriptures to be something they never claim to be by insisting that they teach science at all.
That’s a story that fundamentalists have made up; it is not reality. I had adamant atheist science professors and agnostic ones and not a one excluded God in the a priori fashion you put forth – they just recognized, as did my Christian (and Muslim and Hindu) professors that science has no way to measure or test for God.
Again, where is that in the text?
When someone claims that the scriptures have to be 100% scientifically and historically accurate to be true, it’s obvious that they are not believing the Bible because the Bible never defines truth that way – that definition comes from scientific materialism, nowhere else. Very few Christians have bothered to examine their own worldview, they just assume that the one from the culture they were raised in is correct and apply it to the scriptures without bothering to ask if the scriptures actually fit their worldview.
I do, by reading it in the original languages as the types of ancient literature it was written as. Reading it any other way is a trap that has caught many down the centuries, a trap that all too often has resulted in heresy.
Genesis is not clear when read in English with a modern worldview because it wasn’t written in English and has almost no point of contact with a modern worldview.
I absolutely agree, and on that single point, the crux of this matter is exposed, the things which have occurred in the distant past at creation and shortly thereafter, are not observable, i.e. we do not have a time machine, to go back and observe them happening, but we do have an eyewitness account from the Living God who created it all and who holds all of creation in existence, even now.
Of course,
but no matter how much genuinely honest and meticulous experimental rigour is applied to events that occurred thousands of years ago, the derived results do NOT hold the same gravitas as those observed from events that happen in the present, that are directly observable, and repeatable without having to make many assumptions that may or may not be correct.
Are you seriously claiming that radiometric dating does not incorporate algorithms that apply multiple assumptions about the samples history since it was presumed to have formed?
Perhaps you miss the point, that is that, the Bible remains ever current, ever correct and forever applicable whereas science textbooks by their very nature are always imperfect, reflections of the current state of knowledge, and probably not even that as for many years after the Piltdown Man Hoax was uncovered and the Ernst Haeckel Fake Photo’s supporting evolution were exposed, the science textbooks continued to reprint the false and deceptive evolution supporting alleged “facts”.
This is called “making stuff up” – the writer of the first Creation account didn’t know anything about a rotating Earth; his understanding of Earth was a flat disk with a solid dome over it with water all around, i.e. on the edges, below the underworld, and above the solid dome.
It’s also called “forcing your worldview on ancient writings”. You’ll never understand what a writer meant unless you work at seeing things from his understanding.
But again, unfortunately you either misunderstand me or misrepresent what I said. I did not say anything about what the writer of the first creation account knew or didn’t know.
All I said is that, “It is likely that the Earth was already rotating from the beginning.”
I may be wrong too, I certainly do not claim to know for sure, but I have concluded in my own mind, that as the Bible clearly states in Genesis 1
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness He called “night.” And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
it is fairly reasonable to think that the Earth was rotating from the beginning, because when God created light, He separated the light from the darkness as day and night which we know is precisely what occurs even now on the Earth, as half the planet is in day and the opposite half is in darkness. Constantly moving into the future in time, as the planet rotates, day and night move continuously into the future. Time is expressed in the first Chapter of Genesis as the passing of the numbered days, that I understand to be days as we know them now in everyday life.
It makes a mockery of the Holy Spirit as well since a “strict, literal approach” requires that the Spirit have taken possession of the writers’ minds to get them to write in a very alien worldview.
Yep. YEC requires picking and choosing when to read literally and when not, when to force a modern cosmology on ancient writers and when not. The only consistent approach is to read ancient literature as the ancient literature it is – what Dr. Michael Heiser calls “let the Bible be what it is”.
Nicely and succinctly put.
Just the opening Creation story has enough to say to us that it could fill entire books – and most of it is thrown out by the YEC approach. Reading that account in the light of its ancient literary types and in its historical and worldview setting brings out glory that a YEC approach misses.
I heartily endorse the first sentence here!
But I’ve never quite made the connection you show in the rest of it anywhere near as clearly as you put it.
This is true not just in terms of oil and coal; geologists who are assessing the viability of a construction site have the same issue – and in fact in one instance on the US west coast a bit of dishonesty by a geologist got people killed when a building under construction suddenly headed for the beach. I don’t know if there was any ideology involved, but there was dishonesty.
That’s on what I say that it’s the more that I can’t understand after watching the video. Because to me the logical sense of temporal-order then : Day-1 precedes - the creation of the earth proceeds
In my OP, where I already have the believe about 24-hour Day, then later on I read Gen 1:1-5 …
I myself unable to put that the first hour of the first day happen at Gen 1:1. Because if I put that the first hour of the first day happen at Gen 1:1 then in other words verse-1 say : In the beginning of Day-1 God created the heavens and the earth.
which caused me to question: How come Day-1 preceded the existence of Light+Earth ?
At least to me, it can’t be Day-1 preceded the creation of the Light+Earth.
That’s why I put Day-1 begin after the existence of Light in my OP.
Anyway, assumed that I “received” that the first hour of Day-1 began in the evening BEFORE the creation of the Earth+Light. Then my question is: How come Day-1 preceded the existence of Light+Earth ?
Absolutely. Along with this it must be remembered that nowhere do the scriptures ever put forth a definition of truth as requiring 100% scientific and historical accuracy – that idea is imported from outside the text.
As Martin Luther was wont to say, “This is most certainly true”.
That one drives me up a wall! I taught high school freshman general science briefly, and despite that being over thirty years ago the basics I passed on back then are enough to make much of what YECists post here look sadly foolish.
Assumptions which are based on the tested and proven body of prior work should not be conflated with blind allegiance to a predetermined conclusion. Scientific research is not required to start each day with a blank slate of ignorance; Newton acknowledged this when he stated he stood on the shoulder of giants, and we have learned a great deal since then. Creationists, on the other hand, start with antagonism to long established understanding and a oath to extra-Biblical dogma. That is not the same.
Radiometric dating applies observational physical, chemical, and geological science to the precise measurement of empirical samples, based on the same corpus of knowledge which allowed for the building of reactors and nuclear weapons. They know what they are doing. Given all the YEC harping extolling observational science, you would think that accelerated nuclear decay has been observed. Not so; no given isotope has ever been seen to vary in the slightest unless fully stripped of its electrons in an atom smasher. So unless your idea of a flood is turning the Earth into plasma, the whole idea is a big farce. It has no basis in observational science. It is not in scripture. It is a made up story to evade the evidence from radiometric dating, which in fact is based on observational science.
What is more basic to observational science than the conservation of mass and energy? By compressing four billion years of nuclear decay to the flood year, you just vaporized the planet with the transforming of mass to energy. You also radiation poisoned the Noah family from within by their own body carbon and potassium.
Cite any present standard textbook presenting Piltdown and Haeckel as current evidence, or I’m calling false witness.
And actually, embryology still does support evolutionary development.
YEC inherently requires violating the Deuteronomy passage because it starts out with dishonesty about what the Bible is. You may not know you are making false statements, but in reading the Creation stories as though they were written by a friend’s grandfather in a journal of events he witnessed you cannot help but make false statements.
Sorry, but that isn’t true. It assumes that Genesis was written within a modern worldview instead of the ancient one that the audience would have understood. Anyone who lived in Egypt at the time of the Exodus would have recognized that the first Genesis Creation account was both a ‘royal chronicle’ and a temple inauguration account, neither of which is meant as history.
That anyone thinks they can assess what kind of literature that account is just from reading it in English shows a degree of arrogance that is astounding.
Nope. Hebrew scholars (who grew up reading it) back before Galileo thought about dropping balls off a tower as an experiment concluded purely from the Hebrew text that:
the universe started out smaller than a grain of mustard (i.e. as small as is possible)
it then expanded rapidly beyond human comprehension to a size also beyond human comprehension
the universe began as a fluid (“waters”) so thick light could not shine
when that fluid thinned enough for light to be able to shine, God commanded light into being
the universe is old beyond human counting
the earth is also incredibly old, but younger than the universe
They got this from the Hebrew, nothing else. That they did so long before Newton or Hutton shows us that “Deep Time of Billions of Years and the Big Bang explanation of origins” are not in fact recent, they are centuries old, coming from before modern science really got rolling.
I have yet to see any explanation of how this is so, just repetition of the claim that it is.
Nope. In my few university biology courses (mostly botany) nothing was presupposed and all assumptions were challenged. This is another story that YECists tell themselves but isn’t true in practice.
But it never states that! That’s an assumption imported from outside the text.
Do you have any idea how genealogies were used and made back in the ancient near east?
The Hebrew doesn’t say that. Indeed at most Genesis says that the complete Earth-disk was covered with the solid dome over the Earth holding back the flood waters from escaping.
The “global” idea comes due to the Old Testament being imported into a culture steeped in Greek understanding of the cosmos. The Greeks understood that the world was a globe, and that understanding got grafted into the Noah story.
I can’t find “higher” in the text – it says the waters “prevailed” “five, ten cubits”, which sounds like a story-telling method showing increase; the water got five cubits deep, then ten cubits deep.
Up through v. 21 the word given as “earth” above in context should be rendered “land”. This would indicate the world known to Noah (or to the writer, but I’m going to presume to Noah since the stopry predates the written version).
But the Bible doesn’t describe such a thing – at most it describes a flooded earth-disk where the solid dome over the earth kept the floodwaters from flowing away.
Stop reading modern cosmology into ancient literature!
Not so. What we do find is not even close to what a global flood would produce. Thinking that all the sediments came from the Flood was wishful thinking in the eighteenth century, and we know a lot more now than they did.
A global flood wouldn’t have worked that way – vegetative matter would have either floated or been mixed in with enough loose material to keep it submerged, it wouldn’t have produced the thick seams we find in reality.
When you make statements like the two immediately above, you aren’t telling the truth. You may think it’s the truth because it’s what someone you trust told you, but it isn’t.
But even were it so, what is described in the Bible does not match with flood geology. As I mentioned above, there is pre-flood reference to the same rivers as were familiar to the Hebrews, so the Biblical account itself tells against a catastrophic sedimentary reshaping of the Earth.
I see that it’s important that I note here that it is merely my humble conclusion that the Earth though formless and void was rotating, but as I have already stated on a previous post, my humble conclusion may be incorrect, I certainly do not know for certain, but it makes sense to me that as light was created on the same first day as the Heavens and the Earth and light was separated from the darkness, then a rotating Earth would provide just that. But equally, it may be that the earth was not made rotating in the beginning, and was made to rotate when God separated the light from the darkness, i.e., day and night were created in that process, all still on the first day, but perhaps some hours later in the day. The text doesn’t say either way, thus it would probably have been preferable if I did not make the statement, “It is likely that the Earth was already rotating from the beginning”. I used the word likely, because I do not know for sure.
I’m not sure I follow you here.
To me it is clear that the first thing to occur is:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Then He made light, then He made the separation of night and day, darkness and light.
And all this happened on the first day.
With regard to what I myself believe, I hope that clarifies it for you, though you may see it differently to me, I don’t know.
I really don’t see the problem here, again:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Then He made light, then He made the separation of night and day, darkness and light. And all this happened on the first day.
I do not understand why you think: “How come Day-1 preceded the existence of Light+Earth?”
when the text clearly states that Earth and light were both created on the first day.
God is not limited by anything that I know of, He chose to create in the way that He did and He inspired the author to tell us what happened for our edification and I guess to provide a clear basis for the vitally important gospel message of salvation through Jesus our kinsman redeemer and Saviour
I must admit that I am not clear on what you mean here, I don’t know when the first hour of day one occurred, it really doesn’t matter to me, suffice to say that the Heavens and Earth were created in the beginning, then light, then light and darkness, then night and day. Now, whether any of those were simultaneous or consecutive, the text does not tell us,but we do know that they all happened on the first day.It really is that straightforward to me. I have understood that since I was about 12 years old about 60 years ago, and my understanding of the Genesis creation account really hasn’t changed much, if at all in all that time.
I agree with Jonathan Sarfati in that video you watched that the creation account is probably one of the most easy to understand passages in all of scripture.
Why did night and day, darkness and light, need separating again on day four?
14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.
I once spent some time in a physics lab outside of class testing the polarizing filters we had; there were some serious discrepancies in results from a recently completed lab exercise. Sure enough, we found some that were of sufficiently poor quality to have thrown off measurements.
Definitely. When in geology lab we estimated the age of rocks, we weren’t told where they came from, neither in terms of maps or geologic formations, we just applied the methods for dating that we had – no assumptions about the age of the earth were involved, just honest lab work.
But if I put myself like Tarzan, where I grew up alone since a baby with no other human being, I’m sure I will think that “my land where I stood is not like an orange fruit but like a leaf”. Hence, if I just keep on walking, I will think that at one point I will arrive at the edge of my land where I stood.
Assumed that me as Tarzan is in a small island, so, I walk to the edge of my land, put mark X in this place, then I walk to the left along the edge of the island, then I’ve found out that I arrive back to the place where I mark X, then it’s absurd to me to conclude that “my land is like an orange”, I will conclude that “my land is like a leaf”.
Now my Ape Mom say to me:
No Tarzan, your world is not like a leaf but like an orange. There are beings like you who live at our opposite site.
I will respond to my Ape Mom:
It is a fable mom. It is a fable that:
there are Antipodes —> the world is like an orange, there is a place opposite to the place where we are
men on the opposite side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets on us —> on that opposite site, there are beings like me
men who walk with their feet opposite ours —> those beings like me walk their feet opposite to us.
It’s absurd Mom.
Even should I believe #1 or demonstrated that the world is round or spherical in form (like an orange), it does not follow that the part of the earth opposite to us is not completely covered with water, Mom. Because yesterday I walked along the edge of our land, all I can see to the righthand of me is all water, Mom. Even if that there is a land but I can’t see it because it is too far, then that land surely is an empty land, Mom. No beings like me in that land, Mom.
From ChatGpt:
The term “antipodes” is a Latinized form derived from the Greek words “anti” (meaning “opposite”) and “pous” (meaning “foot”), so the literal translation is “those with opposite feet” or “those who have their feet opposite ours.”
So it can have two meanings:
A. there are ants which walk at the stem-end of an orange fruit, and there also ants which walk at the blossome-end of the same orange fruit.
B. there are ants which walk on one side of the leaf (top) and there are also ants which walk on the other side of the same leaf (bottom)
Only if I Tarzan had observed those ants in A and B, most likely I won’t dispute my Ape Mom.
“Most likely” because I myself can’t proove that I can walk upside down on a big branch of tree .
Yes, because radiometric dating does not make the assumptions that young earthists claim that it makes, and the assumptions that it does make are not as untestable as they make it out to be. This is something that I’ve explained to you before.
There’s something that you need to understand here. If you want to challenge the assumptions behind a scientific technique without being guilty of lying, there are three things that you MUST do:
State accurately and precisely what the assumptions are.
Make sure that the technique in question really does make the assumptions that you are claiming that it makes, and that it hasn’t been superseded by a more modern technique that has found ways to bypass or test those assumptions.
Provide a mathematically coherent, logically consistent and numerically precise explanation as to how the assumptions could have been violated in such a way as to remain consistent with both the physical evidence that we see in nature and with whatever alternative hypothesis you are proposing.
The bottom line is this. If you are going to challenge a scientific technique, you MUST challenge what scientists who use it actually do in reality in the present day, and not an over-simplification, outdated version, cartoon caricature or garbled misunderstanding of it. Because attempting to debunk something that does not accurately represent how the technique works in reality is a straw man argument, which is a form of lying.
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