[quote]pushharder wrote:
Jeffe wrote:
An unhealthy degree of skepticism is the kind of skepticism that keeps maniacs from finally admitting that the church is in fact wrong, and the world is billions of years old.
Edit: As I was clicking “post” I caught a glimpse of the above post asking for someone to point out a single error in church doctrine. I think I just did that.
Tsk, tsk. Another inattentive reader or one with poor reading skills. Go see if you can find a quote about no errors in church doctrine. It’s not there, buddy.
I did make a statement about no errors in the Bible, at least any that amount to doctrinal inconsistencies. You think you know of some? Go git 'em and bring 'em here.
The fact is that the concept of the bible
…and again another capitalization rebel. LOL You guys are so cotton-pickin’ contumacious.
…being “the word of God” is illogical right on the face of it. Even if the entire book, EVERYTHING in it in fact happened…it’s still nothing more than a history lesson. It was written by humans, and almost all of it is simply a story being told. Fact of fiction is irrelevant in this particular case. The “word of God” is not what some people decided to jot down thousands of years ago. That’s the word of those people, and more importantly, the word of the people who translated the book through the centuries. Unless there’s a “God’s Publishing House” somewhere pumping out translated versions with absolutely 0% variation in syntax and meaning.
Highly subjective but you are entitled to your opinion.
On top of that, the Genesis story claims that the whole Universe is a few thousand years old. A story written something like 5,000 years ago. Today we have accurate measurements of distance through our Galaxy using known constants (the speed of light) and some other factors that I am simply not familiar with.
These calculations let us look up into the sky and say, “Yup, that star is 20 million light years away.” Knowing that the calculations and distances are accurate (this has been experimented and confirmed to the point of scientific fact) Then one must admit that the star has been emitting visible light for 20 million years.
If one has to admit that something existed in our Universe 20 million years ago then they must admit that the Genesis story did not happen in the time-frame it claimed.
You have some things to learn about light (energy) such as different theories and ideas about whether it’s speed is constant or variable, whether it has ALWAYS traveled at 186,000 miles per second in a vacuum, whether or not God could have created the universe with the beams of energy already in place or not, etc.
When you come into these discussions without some rudimentary knowledge about the above then you enter ill-prepared and easily parried.
If one admits that there is an error in Genesis, then they must admit there is an error in the Bible, in the church doctrine. And if one must admit that there is an error in one story in the Bible, then they MUST admit that the stories and therefore storytellers of the bible are not infallible, and the chances of more errors, perhaps far more meaningful than a matter of time frame, is rather high.
Like I said, you go find them and bring 'em back here. Fetch, Spot, fetch.
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I don’t know what capitalization has to do with anything. It might have simply been a typo.
As far as coming to an argument with only “rudimentary knowledge” I think it’s fair to say that anyway who hasn’t studied physics in some formal way would only carry a rudimentary knowledge. However, it can be said, even with a most basic knowledge of the subject, that the variation in the speed of light to account for a difference of 19,999,000 years of travel time (assuming the 20 million light year example) is far too great, and at the same time far too small to be considered a realistic possibility.
It’s essentially saying that for no particular reason, light energy decided to travel orders of magnitude faster, only to slow down, again, for no particular reason. Making the claim that God decided to put the beams of light in place already is one of the most absurd claims I’ve come across. To what end? So we can look up at all the shiny things God made?
More importantly, every accepted theory of light uses a lightspeed of 186,000miles/second through a vacuum, and it only gets slower from that point.
To back up this claim a bit further, the only thing that does not have a “speed limit” so to speak, is space itself…allowing for the extremely rapid expansion during the first few seconds of the Big Bang. However, light, is still limited to 186,000miles/second during that rapid expansion, because space itself is moving relative to matter, not the other way around (this idea is the concept behind a “warp drive”).
The light does not catch up until the expansion is long since completed, giving us the estimated age of the Universe at roughly 14 billion years old (the oldest light and radiation we’ve recorded)
The point is, the speed of light is a reasonably constant and measurable distance. IN fact, the meter is now a tiny measurement of the distance light travels in a certain interval of time through a specific medium. The reason? Because it’s always the same.
As far as my arguments being “easily parried” I must note that you parried nothing. You use a pompous and arrogant tone to appear “above the argument” and allow you to assume a winning posture, yet you provide no argument at all.