But the difference I see between christianity beliefs and scientific “things”, is that christianity is based upon the faith and belief in a higher power. And that that power can do as it pleases regardless of the laws of physics and the universe. . .
Exactly. That is the defining line between what falls under the sole provenance of religions and philosophy and the like, and what falls under science. Science is a methodological approach to examining, defining, and categorising the physical laws of the universe and working out how they inter-relate. By the very definition of a god, any deity would be beyond the realm of science. As would be any miracles performed or other such acts. Any acts not directly influenced by these supernatural actions, on the other hand, would be acting under normal natural laws and would thus be part of science’s demesne.
The problem comes when people try to apply either science to a purely religious matter (e.g. the possible existence of a supernatural entity), or religion to a scientific matter (e.g. radioisotopic dating). Radioisotopic dating is purely natural laws, unless you have any specific reason to think that God goes and uses supernatural means to fiddle with it on a constant basis—and nobody has every uncovered even a hint of that happening.
Religious fundamentalists have no problem accepting the science of electric circuits, or of radio broadcasting, or of producing nitrate fertilisers. You never see them protesting gravitational theory or aeronautical engineering. They only raise a fuss when science happens to stumble into realms that they consider to be the provenance of religion, such as when science comes up with an age of the Earth that doesn’t agree with what the fundamentalists insist must be the right age.
But there is no reason to believe that the aging of the Earth has anything to do with supernatural powers. The creation of the universe? Perhaps. But not the process of this planet gradually aging. Even a literal reading of the Bible provides nothing to say that the aging (as opposed to the creation) of the Earth wasn’t a natural process. That falls squarely into the realm of natural processes, and so should be addressed with science, not with religion.
And science has addressed it, repeatedly and continuously, with the exact same methodology as has been used to address electronics and radio and gravity and every single other aspect of science that the religious fundamentalists have absolutely no qualms about using and accepting. Why should the age of the planet or evolution be any different? Why is science good enough for everything else, but not for these subjects? Why would hundreds of thousands of scientists all over the world, from practically every different background and point of view, be engaged in a vast conspiracy to fake the science behind these subjects?
And even if they wanted to do such a thing, they couldn’t. All of science is interconnected. No branch of science exists totally independent of any other branch. Evolutionary theory is based on biology. Biology depends on chemistry. Chemistry is shaped by physics. For scientists to have faked things such as the age of the planet, they would have had to basically fake all of science. And that would be rather noticeable, what with science then not functioning. But we know that it does work. So science is real. Not only would such a conspiracy be utterly improbable to organise, it simply wouldn’t be possible to conduct.
Which leaves the other option, that there is a flaw in the methodology. But again, the science behind finding the age of things is not an isolated science. It incorporates in one way or another a large percentage of the other branches of science as well. There is no single means used to date samples. When you look at the fine details, you’ll find that everything from Newton’s Laws to the Theory of Relativity is connected to it. So if there is a fundamental flaw in the methodology, then the flaw is fundamental to all science methodology.
And again, we know that that is not the case. Science does work overall. In isolated situations it sometimes doesn’t, because we are all human and do make mistakes. But those mistakes are noticeable, because they result in contradictions and problems. We might not know what exactly is wrong, but we can see that there is something wrong. If it is some very narrow or obscure splinter of scientific theory then we might not notice it for a while, but for something as wide-ranging and practical as the means used to date samples it would be like finding an entire chapter written in Chinese ideograms within a book that is otherwise printed in English. It would be noticed, and scientists would flock to the problem to try to figure out what was going on. They wouldn’t try to hide it; not only would it be too large to hide, but it would be necessary to figure out what was wrong or else all of their work would have to be discarded. Besides, given the variety in human nature you just know that some would want to examine it for fun or for prestige.
So there is no such overall contradiction or flaw apparent in the dating methods. Given how wide-ranging the methods are, how often they are used, and how often they are questioned and tested (yes, scientists do still test and examine even old established techniques, just to check on them), such a contradiction would be glaringly obvious. But there isn’t one.
And so the religious fundamentalists have to keep on inventing one, as we’ve seen here. They create arguments based on false information, and then spread them as widely as they can. And because they are so motivated to spread this disinformation, and because there is absolutely no monitoring or control of such information, it spreads everywhere and becomes the widely seen and believed disinformation.
A tactic I’ve found that works in such debates is this:
“You say that God created everything, etc, yes? Ok.. Prove to me that God didn’t create everything *five minutes ago*. Your entire life, up until *now*, has been nothing but a memory, including this conversation. He can do anything he wants, right? If you can make the universe, you can make the people in it think it’s been there all along.. “
This usually gets them a bit flustered.
Maybe I should start a ‘REALLY Young Earth Creationist’ group..
Maybe I should start a ‘REALLY Young Earth Creationist’ group..
What about an “Earth Is Not Yet Created” group?
Or to really get folks angry, you can start a group that insists that, since apparently God feels the need to play practical jokes on scientists by planting fossils and messing with radioactive decay and whatnot, He also probably fixed things so that every time people read the Bible they see words that aren’t really there. Insist that the true Bible, if we could only see it, reads something like, “In the beginning, God created marzipan. And He saw it was good. But He left it sitting in his pantry for too many billions of years, waiting for just the right occasion to serve it at a party or something, and so it hardened into a large ball of rock. And in disgust He threw it out His window, and thus was the Earth formed and sent on its path through the Universe.”
You’ll end up getting people wanting to lynch you, or sitting around contemplating their navels whilst contemplating the metaphysics of reality, or else starting a cult of marzipan. Or all three.
Okay, to show that those websites who maintain “we cannot know how many 14C the atmosphere in past times contained, it is an assumption!”, are simply wrong:
Below is a graph of a part of the Reimer et al. Radiocarbon calibration curve (Reimer et al., Radiocarbon vol. 46 (2004) nr. 3, 1029-1058).
It is the part that is based on carefully matching overlapping tree-ring sequences of progressively older pieces of wood. These pieces of wood provide delta 14C values ( = the value with which the actual measured 14C content deviates from a linear theoretical value based on a fixed 14C to total C ratio in the atmosphere and the 14C decay rate).
These delta 14C values show what according to creationist websites “we do not know”: the fluctuation in atmospheric 14C levels over time. This curve is used to calibrate raw 14C dates for these effects, yielding the calibrated 14C ages that are equivalent to calendar years. In the graph below, uncalibrated 14C ages are on the Y-axis, calendar dates after calibration on the X-axis.
These fluctuations in atmospheric 14C content and the deviation from the “ideal” theoretical curve, are mainly the result of fluctuations in solar radiation acivity (the main source of atmospheric 14C production)
Note that the current tree-ring count curve extends well beyond the “biblical” year of creation of the earth. In fact it goes back to times twice as old.
I think most “christians” shun evolution because Darwin spoke the most about it and he was an atheist. I do believe there is a God who predates all other books and beliefs.
There are I’m sure many things in this world that defy explanation. I’ve heard that air planes defy science in their ability to stay in the air, but yet they fly. .
I believe you’re thinking of the bumblebee. The old addage was: ‘aerodynamically a bumblebee can’t fly but he doesn’t know this so he flies’ is a myth, at least now. As our technology has developed, scientists are now able to see just how actual physics are used to make this flight possible:
According to 20th century folklore, the laws of aerodynamics prove that the bumblebee should be incapable of flight, as it does not have the capacity (in terms of wing size or beats per second) to achieve flight with the degree of wing loading necessary. Not being aware of scientists ‘proving’ it cannot fly, the bumblebee succeeds under “the power of its own ignorance”.[25] The origin of this myth has been difficult to pin down with any certainty. John McMasters recounted an anecdote about an unnamed Swiss aerodynamicist at a dinner party who performed some rough calculations and concluded, presumably in jest, that according to the equations, bumblebees cannot fly.[26] In later years McMasters has backed away from this origin, suggesting that there could be multiple sources, and that the earliest he has found was a reference in the 1934 French book Le vol des insectes; they had applied the equations of air resistance to insects and found that their flight was impossible, but that “One shouldn’t be surprised that the results of the calculations don’t square with reality”.[27]
Some credit physicist Ludwig Prandtl (1875–1953) of the University of Göttingen in Germany with popularizing the myth. Others say it was Swiss gas dynamicist Jacob Ackeret (1898–1981) who did the calculations.
In 1934, French entomologist Antoine Magnan included the following passage in the introduction to his book Le Vol des Insectes:
Tout d’abord poussé par ce qui fait en aviation, j’ai appliqué aux insectes les lois de la résistance de l’air, et je suis arrivé avec M. SAINTE-LAGUE a cette conclusion que leur vol est impossible.
This means:
First prompted by the fact of aviation, I have applied the laws of the resistance of air to insects, and I arrived, with Mister Sainte-Lague, at the conclusion that their flight is impossible.
Magnan refers to his assistant André Saint-Lagué who was, apparently, an engineer.
It is believed that the calculations which purported to show that bumblebees cannot fly are based upon a simplified linear treatment of oscillating aerofoils. The method assumes small amplitude oscillations without flow separation. This ignores the effect of dynamic stall, an airflow separation inducing a large vortex above the wing, which briefly produces several times the lift of the aerofoil in regular flight. More sophisticated aerodynamic analysis shows that the bumblebee can fly because its wings encounter dynamic stall in every oscillation cycle.[28]
Another description of a bee’s wing function is that the wings work similarly to helicopter blades, “reverse-pitch semirotary helicopter blades”.
Bees beat their wings approximately 200 times a second, which is 10-20x as fast as nerve impulses can fire. They achieve this because their thorax muscles don’t expand and contract on each nerve firing, but rather vibrate like a plucked rubber band.
Dickinson’s findings seem to be in harmony with the experimental data recorded by physicist Jane Wang of Cornell University, who wrote:
The old bumblebee myth simply reflected our poor understanding of unsteady viscous fluid dynamics. Unlike fixed-wing aircraft with their steady, almost inviscid (without viscosity) flow dynamics, insects fly in a sea of vortices, surrounded by tiny eddies and whirlwinds that are created when they move their wings (as quoted in Segelken, 2000, parenthetical item in orig.).
In addition to delayed stall, Dickinson discovered that the wings generated short-lived strong forces at the beginning and end of each stroke that could not be explained by the stall. These force peaks occurred during stroke reversal, when the wing decelerates and rapidly rotates, suggesting that the rotation itself might be responsible. Dickinson illustrated the idea of rotational circulation by using a tennis ball. A tennis ball hit with backspin pulls air faster over the top, causing the ball to rise, whereas a topspin will pull air faster underneath, causing the ball to sink. Dickinson concluded that flapping wings develop significant lift by rotational circulation.
Scientists still do not know every intricacy involved in the flight of bumblebees and other insects. Scientists hope to learn more from the complex wings of the bumblebee in order to apply the knowledge to aircraft. Engineers can design great aircraft by patterning their work after the Great Architect—He who builds all (Hebrews 3:4). God put so much obvious and careful planning into the tiny wing of the bumblebee—and that is only a minute fraction of the awesome Universe He decisively designed.
LaMa is right on about Darwin being a Christian which was also one of the reasons he hesitated so long to publish his therories and findings. He was also concerned about how his wife would handle this as well because he loved her so much. You might find his own words both enlightening, frightening and then even very hopeful:
Religious Belief
By Charles Darwin
This is an extract from:
The Autobiography of Charles Darwin
1809-1882
With original omissions restored
Edited with Appendix and Notes
by his grand-daughter
Nora Barlow.
(1958)
During these two years[1] I was led to think much about religion. Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality. I suppose it was the noveltry of the argument that amused them. But I had gradually come, by this time, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow at sign, etc., etc., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian. The question then continually rose before my mind and would not be banished,—is it credible that if God were now to make a revelation to the Hindoos, would he permit it to be connected with the belief in Vishnu, Siva, &c, as Christianity is connected with the Old Testament. This appeared to me utterly incredible.
By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is suppoted,—that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become,—that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us,—that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneous with the events,—that they differ in many important details, far too important as it seemed to me to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eyewitnesses;—by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least noveltry or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wild-fire had some weight on me. Beautiful as is the morality of the New Testament, it can hardly be denied that its perfection depends in part on the interpretation which we now put on metaphors and allegories.
But I was very unwilling to give up my belief;—I feel sure of this for I can well remember often and often inventing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeji or elsewhere which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlasting punished.
And this is a damnable doctrine[2]
Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws. But I have discussed this subject at the end of my book on the Variation of Domestic Animals and Plants[3], and the argument there given has never, as far as I can see, been answered.
But passing over the endless beautiful adaptions which we everywhere meet with, it may be asked how can the generally beneficient arrangement of the world be accounted for? Some writers indeed are so much impressed with the amount of suffering in the world that they doubt if we look to all sentinent beings, whether there is more of misery or of happiness;—whether the world as a whole is a good or a bad one. According to my judgement happiness decidedly prevails, though this would be very difficult to prove. If the truth of this conclusion be granted, it harmonises well with the effects which we might expect from natural selection. If all the individuals of any species were habitually to suffer to an extreme degree they would neglect to propagate their kind; but we have no reason to believe that this have ever or at least often occured. Some other considerations, moreover, lead to the belief that all sentinent beings have been formed so as to enjoy, as a general rule, happiness.
The more we learn, the more questions we have which invites exploration and change and all these things make us better, stronger and more able to be good stewards of this Earth and the Universe when we move out into it….and that we certainly will do; it takes great courage to move in that direction because, it means give up old ideas for new knowledge.
The way I understood it, is that Darwin was a Christian until much later on in life, when he became agnostic. Some accounts attribute his loss of faith to the passing of his daughter.
A tactic I’ve found that works in such debates is this:
“You say that God created everything, etc, yes? Ok.. Prove to me that God didn’t create everything *five minutes ago*. Your entire life, up until *now*, has been nothing but a memory, including this conversation. He can do anything he wants, right? If you can make the universe, you can make the people in it think it’s been there all along.. “
This usually gets them a bit flustered.
Maybe I should start a ‘REALLY Young Earth Creationist’ group..
Dang, that was an arguement put forth (in a different scenario) in my Philosophical Problems class. “There is no way of knowing what is real besides yourself, as you could very well be decieved by God or a demon”. I think it was Descartes who thought it up.
I believe he also concluded that God would never decieve anybody, though one has to wonder when considering the whole Abraham-sacrificing-Issac bit (I know it was a test of faith, but it was still deception). Hmm…
A tactic I’ve found that works in such debates is this:
“You say that God created everything, etc, yes? Ok.. Prove to me that God didn’t create everything *five minutes ago*. Your entire life, up until *now*, has been nothing but a memory, including this conversation. He can do anything he wants, right? If you can make the universe, you can make the people in it think it’s been there all along.. “
This usually gets them a bit flustered.
Maybe I should start a ‘REALLY Young Earth Creationist’ group..
Dang, that was an arguement put forth (in a different scenario) in my Philosophical Problems class. “There is no way of knowing what is real besides yourself, as you could very well be decieved by God or a demon”. I think it was Descartes who thought it up.
I believe he also concluded that God would never decieve anybody, though one has to wonder when considering the whole Abraham-sacrificing-Issac bit (I know it was a test of faith, but it was still deception). Hmm…
In psychology, bicameralism is a hypothesis which argues that the human brain once assumed a state known as a bicameral mind in which cognitive functions are divided between one part of the brain which appears to be “speaking”, and a second part which listens and obeys.
The term was coined by psychologist Julian Jaynes, who presented the idea in his 1976 book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, wherein he made the case that a bicameral mentality, that is to say a mental state in which there are two distinct sections of consciousness, was the normal and ubiquitous state of the human mind as recently as 3000 years ago. He used governmental bicameralism to metaphorically describe such a state, in which the experiences and memories of the right hemisphere of the brain are transmitted to the left hemisphere via auditory hallucinations. This mental model was replaced by the conscious mode of thought, which Jaynes argues is grounded in the acquisition of metaphorical language. The idea that language is a necessary component of subjective consciousness and more abstract forms of thinking has been gaining acceptance in recent years, with proponents such as Daniel Dennett, William H. Calvin, Merlin Donald, John Limber, Howard Margolis, and Jose Luis Bermudez.[1]
——————Jaynes’ case for bicameralism
“ At one time, human nature was split in two, an executive part called a god, and a follower part called a man. Neither part was Consciously aware.[2] ”
According to Jaynes, ancient people in the bicameral state would experience the world in a manner that has similarities to that of a modern-day schizophrenic. Rather than making conscious evaluations in novel or unexpected situations, the person would hallucinate a voice or “god” giving admonitory advice or commands, and obey these voices without question; one would not be at all conscious of one’s own thought processes per se. Others have argued that this state of mind is recreated in members of cults.[3]
In his 1976 work The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes proposed that human brains existed in a bicameral state until as recently as 3000 years ago. Jaynes builds a case for this hypothesis by citing evidence from many diverse sources including historical literature. He took an interdisciplinary approach, drawing data from many different fields.[4]
Jaynes asserts that until roughly the times written about in Homer’s Iliad, humans did not generally have the self-awareness characteristic of consciousness as most people experience it today. Rather, Jaynes argued that the bicameral individual was guided by mental commands believed to be issued by external “gods”—the commands which were so often recorded in ancient myths, legends and historical accounts; these commands were however emanating from individuals’ own minds. This is exemplified not only in the commands given to characters in ancient epics but also the very muses of Greek mythology which “sang” the poems: Jaynes argues that while later interpretations see the muses as a simple personification of creative inspiration, the ancients literally heard muses as the direct source of their music and poetry.
Jaynes inferred that these “voices” came from the right brain counterparts of the left brain language centres—specifically, the counterparts to Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area. These regions are somewhat dormant in the right brains of most modern humans, but Jaynes noted that some studies show that auditory hallucinations correspond to increased activity in these areas of the brain.[4]
For example, he asserts that, in the Iliad and sections of the Old Testament, no mention is made of any kind of cognitive processes such as introspection, and he argues that there is no apparent indication that the writers were self-aware. According to Jaynes, the older portions of the Old Testament (such as the Book of Amos) have little or none of the features of some later books of the Old Testament (such as Ecclesiastes) as well as later works such as Homer’s Odyssey, which show indications of a profoundly different kind of mentality—an early form of consciousness.[4]
