[quote]Iron Dwarf wrote:
[quote]imhungry wrote:
[quote]Iron Dwarf wrote:
This thread is STILL going strong?
Time to throw a monkey wrench into the works.
NSFW!
http://blackgifs.com/gifs/nsfw57.gif
lol
[/quote]
My carbon dating methods put her at approximately 18 years of age.
[/quote]
Check out this one. Tell me you don’t believe in God after that!
http://blackgifs.com/gifs/nsfw54.gif[/quote]
Oh my.
<Right Click/Save as>
Thanks!
[quote]Mattlebee wrote:
It doesn’t, however, change the Biblical claim that humans appeared ~6000 years ago.
[/quote]
First off, that’s not a “Biblical” claim. That’s an extrapoloation made by man by use of the Torah. The sages specifically note that the events recorded prior to the First Temple period have huge time gaps. It’s basically a “minium age” for everything that is listed to have occurred.
Well in Hebrew, it says there was evening (actually “chaos”) and morning (actually “order”), the first “day.” There is no specific specification of 24 hours or 24 seconds or 24 billion years. Of course, there is no elimination of it, either. I’m personally not hung up on the issue, although the idea of Einstein’s theory re: time making the 6 24 hour day thing work has the peotic “feel” I used to get when working a proof back in a math class at MIT. So often the right answer is elegant like that.
There were specific order of events with beginnings and endings. Each has meanings today. G-d works in cycles.
There are two answers to this: Number one, he was talking to a bronze age hairy dude on a mountain. Only so much can crammed in. (Not sure where the idea that there were many “authors” came from; that’s a Christian contruct I think. Moshe received the Torah.)
Number two, the Torah is not meant to be fully understood, at least in this life. It is meant to be studied, because through the process of cotemplating the Holy, we become better men. It has many, many layers — number games, puzzles, riddles, puns, even sex jokes, most of which are lost when translated from Hebrew.
In fact, in a number of places the Torah explicitly states it is written opaquely for various reasons: to cause closer study, to hide revelation from those who do not deserve it, and to time revelation for a later date.
[quote]
Why would God be constrained by the speed of light and therefore take millions of years to create anything in his own expanding universe? [/quote]
How about: because he created the Rules and chose to live by them?
[quote]Mattlebee wrote:
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]Grimlorn wrote:
This thread is so disappointing. Pushharder was able to basically twist this into a Atheists vs. Theists thread, when a few posters just made a few smartass comments about creationists who believe the world is 6000 years old. Not all theists. Really wasn’t worth arguing over for 25 pages.[/quote]
Actually I the article Jewbacca posted was well worth the trouble and I have enjoyed the professors comments. [/quote]
X2[/quote]
x9000. Those two things have been worth the significant price of admission and reading a trainwreck. Many many thanks![/quote]
It’s certainly an interesting article, but sometimes the numbers just match up neatly by chance and sometimes sophistry can disguise reality.
The premise that the age of the universe is six God-days, plus the ~6000 years of the Bible/Torah is fine, but as soon as you convert God-days into human-years the age comes out to be ~15,000,000,000 years. The age is the same whatever units you use. It doesn’t, however, change the Biblical claim that humans appeared ~6000 years ago.
[/quote]
The bible never makes that claim.
The audience for the original reading didn’t understand space-time continuum’s, relativity, quantum mechanics and the like. They really didn’t even know they weren’t supposed to fuck goats and eat buzzards.
Further, to this original audience the Genesis story makes a claim that God created everything was pretty ground breaking since all the other deities of the region and time primarily worked with in the context of creation… Nobody gave much thought to how shit got there.
Intertwining biblical messages within the context of a single episode is nothing new. The fact that this study in detail was going on in the 13th century is quite fascinating to me.
Thinking God could have done it better or be more obvious really doesn’t mean anything. I think we all want him to be obvious and plain. Apparently, it’s exactly the way he wanted it. If he wanted to be obvious, he would have been, but then we wouldn’t have lovely debates and conversations like this one.
It did not claim God is constrained by the SOL?? It’s simply talking about how perspective, motion, size, speed and distance affect the measure of time and how looking at it that way can yield some very interesting facts that you may not have ever seen before. There’s never anything wrong with looking at things from other perspectives.
I went to a very conservative, Christian university and part of the required curriculum was some sort of bible studies class. I can’t remember the name of the class.
But, basically the posts above by Jewbacca and Pat, are what I recall from the class.
It really was one of my favorite required classes to be honest. But then the content was from a historical standpoint of the bible rather than a religious one.
Ya know its my first time in thsi thread, and I assumed it would be discussion about this 298 million year old forest but for some reason i see fucken talk about God, this is pathetic.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Can any of the posters who have commented here intelligently and reasonably explain why the Appearance of Age Theory canNOT work? From a scientific or philosophical or theological perspective.[/quote]
God could have created everything five minutes ago.
All of your memories could be “fake”. You could be just five minutes old push.
But you sure do look older than five minutes and the universe sure does look older than 5,700 years old.
Just because something is possible does not mean it’s the most likely explanation.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]ranengin wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Can any of the posters who have commented here intelligently and reasonably explain why the Appearance of Age Theory canNOT work? From a scientific or philosophical or theological perspective.[/quote]
God could have created everything five minutes ago.
All of your memories could be “fake”. You could be just five minutes old push.
But you sure do look older than five minutes and the universe sure does look older than 5,700 years old.
Just because something is possible does not mean it’s the most likely explanation.[/quote]
You evaded the question. Besides when in the hell did you decide that you ought be included in the “intelligent and reasonable” crowd? ;-)[/quote]
No, he really didn’t. Just a roundabout answer. You asked why the AoA theory canNOT work…well, it COULD. You can’t disprove it in any real sense. It’s an ad hoc cure-all, which is precisely what Occam’s Razor is about (I believe you referenced that WRT it a bit ago…). Part of Occam’s Razor is not just the “simplest” explanation, but the theory with less ad-hoc assumptions or additions. Or phrased another way, ad hoc theories are almost definitionally excluded from viability under Occam’s Razor. That is precisely its weakness from a scientific standpoint.
Forgive the symbolism, but It’s not just “AoA theory” = p. P is ad hoc. It’s p = {q,r,s,t,u,v,x,…}, which are ALL ad hoc subsets. So in reality it is not just 1 ad hoc variable it is a bunch.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
So the theory that’s been around longer than any other is the “ad hoc” one, huh? LOL
Sorry, friend, that’s not good enough.
[edit] This part of his post was just nonsense: "God could have created everything five minutes ago.
All of your memories could be “fake”. You could be just five minutes old push. But you sure do look older than five minutes and the universe sure does look older than 5,700 years old."
The A of A theory is not nonsensical.[/quote]
How is that nonsensical? It is a logical extension of your argument.
Why do you think it is reasonable to assume that God restricted his A of A experiment to some arbitrary date? Other than, of course, it would mean Adam, Eve, Noah, Jesus et al never really existed.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
So the theory that’s been around longer than any other is the “ad hoc” one, huh? LOL
Sorry, friend, that’s not good enough.
[edit] This part of his post was just nonsense: "God could have created everything five minutes ago.
All of your memories could be “fake”. You could be just five minutes old push. But you sure do look older than five minutes and the universe sure does look older than 5,700 years old."
The A of A theory is not nonsensical.[/quote]
I didn’t say the theory was nonsensical.
And what anonym wrote wasn’t nonsense. It was a philosophical response to your question rather than scientific, but it wasn’t nonsense.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
So the theory that’s been around longer than any other is the “ad hoc” one, huh? LOL
Sorry, friend, that’s not good enough.
[edit] This part of his post was just nonsense: "God could have created everything five minutes ago.
All of your memories could be “fake”. You could be just five minutes old push. But you sure do look older than five minutes and the universe sure does look older than 5,700 years old."
The A of A theory is not nonsensical.[/quote]
I didn’t say the theory was nonsensical.
And what anonym wrote wasn’t nonsense. It was a philosophical response to your question rather than scientific, but it wasn’t nonsense. [/quote]
It was self refuting therefore nonsense.
The simple fact of the matter is the A of A theory cannot necessarily be rejected out of hand from a philosophical, scientific or theological basis. Does that make it the correct one? I don’t know.
So you tell me why it should be rejected.[/quote]
Gotta say I’m lost on this one. I didn’t call it self-refuting either. Your original question was “what are your opinions? why can it NOT work?” not “why should it be rejected”. I gave you my take on it–yes it can work. Its difficulty from a scientific standpoint is falsifiability, and a weakness to Occam’s Razor. I feel like you’re being a bit combative here friend. Or if not combative, then a little defensive. I personally don’t particularly care about this subject (C vs. E, etc) much, and I’ve spent far too many hours in the past years on it to really want to start down there again to be honest.
I feel like it is a weak support to a theistic position. Yes, it can in fact be the case: an omnipotent God can do pretty much anything he wants within logical possibility (no “square circles”, being a contradiction in terms). It might also be possible that I am in fact the only real creation of God’s in the universe and that all of you, my troubles, the computer I type this at, and the world around me are but figments of my imagination. I don’t view that as likely. I think that from a “support for theism” standpoint there are much much better areas to focus on.
In other words, I view the AoA as “fruit of the tree”, not as the one of the roots of the argument for or against theism.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
So the theory that’s been around longer than any other is the “ad hoc” one, huh? LOL
Sorry, friend, that’s not good enough.
[edit] This part of his post was just nonsense: "God could have created everything five minutes ago.
All of your memories could be “fake”. You could be just five minutes old push. But you sure do look older than five minutes and the universe sure does look older than 5,700 years old."
The A of A theory is not nonsensical.[/quote]
I didn’t say the theory was nonsensical.
And what anonym wrote wasn’t nonsense. It was a philosophical response to your question rather than scientific, but it wasn’t nonsense. [/quote]
It was self refuting therefore nonsense.
The simple fact of the matter is the A of A theory cannot necessarily be rejected out of hand from a philosophical, scientific or theological basis. Does that make it the correct one? I don’t know.
So you tell me why it should be rejected.[/quote]
I will agree that AOA cannot be rejected on a philosophical or theological basis. After all, if one accepts that there is a supernatural creator that is omnipotent, then that creator logically would have to be capable of making the universe appear older than it is. The question of why it would do such a thing could make for an interesting philosophical discussion, but that is another matter entirely. That does not mean that it is a valid scientific theory, since scientific theories have to do more than just provide a possible explanation of phenomena. It fails on several levels to meet most of the requirements to be considered scientific. For one, scientific theories are generally required to not assert certainty and to be “correctable.” This means that if and when new, and verified/verifiable information, information comes about that contradicts the current theory in question, said theory needs to be able to be modified to include the new data. This is why science will likely never be able to answer everyone’s questions or fully explain natural phenomena. This brings up another point: AOA is not “verifiable” in the scientific sense of the word. In order for data/information to be accepted by the scientific community, it needs to be verifiable, either through proven mathematics, experimentation, or observation. We cannot observe these supposed “Six Days” or recreate the conditions in a lab (although my girlfriend tells me that scientists at the J Craig Venter Institute are close to completing the first man-made life form), we cannot construct a mathematical model either. Another big requirement for a scientific theory is EVIDENCE. There is no actual evidence for AOA, and nor can there be from a scientific perspective since all it really states is that g-d created the universe and made it look older than it is for some reason. This means that no matter how much evidence is collected for determining the age of the universe, all the AOA supporters have to do is say “that is wrong, g-d just made things to look like that is the case, now prove me wrong.” That is another scientific problem with AOA: it is not falsifiable. Finally, a scientific theory needs to be useful in some way. For instance, we now know that Classical (newtonian) Mechanics and Electrical Theory is not accurate. Now, almost all of modern engineering and technology is based on these theories including cars, TV, radio, skyscrapers, airplanes, etc… Does this mean we are going to stop making these things until we more fully understand the phenomena involved? No, because the “laws” of classical mechanics and EM are good enough for what we use them for and we don’t yet have the technology to build machines and other technology using the laws of quantum mechanics. I can’t think of a single practical use for AOA.
[quote]Dr.Matt581 wrote:
(although my girlfriend tells me that scientists at the J Craig Venter Institute are close to completing the first man-made life form),
[/quote]
Wait a second. What does “close to” mean?
Up to this point, life has never been suddenly created from non-living material. You are saying they are “close to” doing this?
That would mean it isn’t living.
