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In the beginning
(Spinning off from the Republican thread)
Having been raised in a Jesus loving home, my homeschool curriculum involving Intelligent Design and Biblical prophecies fulfilled, my knowledge of modern day scientific explanations for the origin of .. everything.. is extremely superficial. Although these superficial understandings are enough to convince me, they are not enough to convict others, i.e. my family. I admit, "it makes more sense" is too subjective, but what do you do when you're not an expert in evolutionary biology or astrophysics or paleogeology etc.? My father has a Metallurgy PhD from Carnegie Mellon (thesis on ice crystal formation), is Conservative Christian and Creationist, studies relativity for fun. My sister has a PhD in microbiology, is married to a missionary, and goes to conferences on "science and faith" to explain why she's a creationist. I have a BFA. -_-
The crew is seemingly full of smart people who know stuff about stuff. I'm curious about your various knowledges and how they contribute to your understanding of the world and modern day science.
Having been raised in a Jesus loving home, my homeschool curriculum involving Intelligent Design and Biblical prophecies fulfilled, my knowledge of modern day scientific explanations for the origin of .. everything.. is extremely superficial. Although these superficial understandings are enough to convince me, they are not enough to convict others, i.e. my family. I admit, "it makes more sense" is too subjective, but what do you do when you're not an expert in evolutionary biology or astrophysics or paleogeology etc.? My father has a Metallurgy PhD from Carnegie Mellon (thesis on ice crystal formation), is Conservative Christian and Creationist, studies relativity for fun. My sister has a PhD in microbiology, is married to a missionary, and goes to conferences on "science and faith" to explain why she's a creationist. I have a BFA. -_-
The crew is seemingly full of smart people who know stuff about stuff. I'm curious about your various knowledges and how they contribute to your understanding of the world and modern day science.
Rand Paul is the Ken Ham of politics. let's compare:My dad and I were debating this. He says that since the universe is expanding, we can't tell if that light was closer, sooner. And that those estimates are based on a homogenous universe. I do not know this stuff well enough, and I was like "red shift something mumble?" (as in, couldn't we figure it out, from the dopplar effect?). Anyone understand on more than a superficial level & can explain?Q-If God created the world 6,000 years ago or so, why are stars millions of light years away?
A-Brendon, what a question! Yes, we know from the dates God gives us in the Bible that He did create the whole universe about 6,000 years ago. When we hear the term light-year, we need to realize it is not a measure of time but a measure of distance, telling us how far away something is. Distant stars and galaxies might be millions of light-years away, but that doesn’t mean that it took millions of years for the light to get here, it just means it is really far away!
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Comments
:-)
If someone says the universe was created 6000 years ago, but we can see a star that is over 7000 light years away form us, then that means that the universe has to be at least 7000 years old. We can see the star in the sky as it was 7000 years ago, which means that the photon was emitted before they say the universe began.
However, if I were a creationist, here is what I would say to that. I would say that when god created the universe 6000 years ago, he put the star 7000 light years away and put the photon already 1000 light years closer to us and on its way to earth.
You see, once you accept that an an omnipotent being that exists you can use it to explain anything and everything. Why is there evolution? God controls the DNA! If there wasn't evolution, why are there fossils? God put them there!
This is why the skeptical and atheist communities have the same fundamental arguments we bring up all the time. The Flying Spaghetti Monster/space teapot, the logical impossibility of omniscience/omnipotence, etc. You must first understand that there is no omnipotent being you are forced to find explanations for things other than "god did it." Once you are that far, science enters the building.
;-)
God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist
You can see the free preview on Amazon. It lays out pretty much every argument against gods existing in a very straightforward A, B, therefore C fashion.
I kept wondering how, if god created everything with a perfect knowledge of the future and therefore knew how every one of his creations would act, he could then hold Adam and Eve responsible for acting against his wishes. The fact that he chose to create Adam and Eve despite his perfect knowledge of their inevitable "in" was a de facto endorsement by god of their actions.
But that's not science, just mythology.
God is unnecessary for scientific exploration and explanation of our universe, mostly because of the logistical impossibility of including an omnipotent being in the scientific method as laid out by Apreche.
That said, you can't disprove God for exactly that same reason. It's a scientifically moot argument either way.
Lots of people say god is love. Well, love exists as a concept and a feeling that many humans have and understand. If you want the word god to be a synonym for the word love, then god exists just as much as love exists.
If you define god as an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, immortal man who created the universe 6000 years ago and did a whole bunch of other things that are written in the bible, then I can disprove that particular god just as much as I can disprove Thor, Santa Claus, or the boogey-man.
That book has a clear explanations of god as defined by judeo-christians.
EDIT: they are open to non-literal interpretations of certain parts of the bible. ^
I am honestly just as interested in the general question of and
The only "god" argument that this doesn't work against is the soft "god as a concept" argument, which itself is stupid for a different set of reasons altogether.
But, for all practical scientific purposes, any particular assertion of the existence of a "god" is equally valid to an assertion that the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists, and is effectively disproven by all inquiry and evidence to date.
It's when you start anchoring "God" with assertions in the Bible, etc, that scientifically rigorous arguments can be made.
As a concept, it holds zero meaning. If something can NOT ever be proved, nor measured, then it doesn't matter if it exists or not. Thus, it does not exist.
"God as a concept" is a separate, vague assertion from "there is a god." The latter is effectively disprovable. The former is exactly in all ways equal to "FSM as a concept."
:-)