Basically Tom you want to be able to have your cake and eat it. You want to be able to say that YEC is true and that evolution is true but you don't want them to fight about it becuase you think they're both right and fighting isn't nice so you invoke omphalos to facilitate it. As I tried to explain to you earlier Romans 2 tells us that we can come to some understanding of God through nature, but if nature is an illusion as you insist then we cannpt know God through nature. It's hardly surprising you're not interested in theology because it blows your premiss (sic) out of the water.
And I never said that YEC is logical so you don't seem to be aware of what I was saying. I said that Omphalos is only logical for a christian if you accept two premisses. YEC is only logical if we ignore all the scientific evidence against it and it's fatal philosophical and theological problems. So basically, it isn't.
But if you want to sow doubt in the minds of those who 'know' there's no god by telling them that they live in the Matrix then that realy is absurd.
__________________
Give me Scotland or I die - John Knox
A mathematician confided
That a Möbius band is one-sided,
And you'll get quite a laugh,
If you cut one in half,
For it stays in one piece when divided!
And I never said that YEC is logical so you don't seem to be aware of what I was saying.
Earlier:
Originally Posted by theFijian
All you are proposing is the Omphalos theory of origins a concequence of which is that either we can't trust our cognitive senses, or God is actively deceiving us. While that may be perfectly logical it is not consistent with the Christian God.
Notice the first sentence from the earlier quote begins with "All you are proposing". Clearly, you are talking about what I am proposing. The second sentence begins "While that may be perfectly logical".
I am aware of what you said. The first sentence has an "is" in it. That would normally mean that there is an equivalence - an identity - between the first and second clauses. So whether you meant the 'that' in the second sentence to refer to the first clause or the second of the first sentence, because you have made them equivalent with an "is", you did say something that undeniably implies "that you understand, at least, that YEC can be perfectly logical" (which is how I put it).
It is you who wants to have your cake and eat it. For the purpose of denouncing, with no meaningful engagement, what I propose is to be equivalent to "omphalos". For the purpose of whether or not it is "perfectly logical" what I propose is not equivalent to "omphalos". Apparently, then, "omphalos" is "perfectly logical"; what I say is equivalent to "omphalos", but what I say is not "perfectly logical"?
Originally Posted by theFijian
You want to be able to say that YEC is true and that evolution is true ...
No I don't. I want to be able to say that YEC could be true and I want to say that evolution is good science.
Originally Posted by theFijian
... but you don't want them to fight about it becuase you think they're both right ...
No, I don't want them to fight because it does terrific harm to the image of Christianity in the non Christian world, and it is our job to convert people to Christianity from that world. Obviously a damaged image can't help.
Originally Posted by theFijian
... and fighting isn't nice ...
You are projecting some stereotype for which you have contempt onto me. "Fighting isn't nice" isn't remotely close to any reasons I have put down here.
Originally Posted by theFijian
... so you invoke omphalos to facilitate it.
It is you who has invoked "omphalos", not me. It is just a rhetorical label which you have repeatedly incanted.
Originally Posted by theFijian
... but if nature is an illusion as you insist
I have insisted no such thing. I said that what we infer from our senses using the methods of science could be incorrect. If you see a dinosaur bone, it's a dinosaur bone. If you see a rock, a person, a bird, or a tree, that's what they are. These things are data for theories, not scientific theories. We are inferring things about what happened before 4004 BC. That's the science. Nobody is suffering an illusion, because nobody can observe things from circa 4004 BC. Our senses are not deceived.
Originally Posted by theFijian
...blows your premiss (sic) out of the water.
Hmmm, what's the sic for? Normally it is placed inside a quotation to indicate that the so marked grammatical or spelling error belongs to the person quoted, not the person doing the quoting. Note that I could have sic-ed you a number of times. For example:
Originally Posted by theFijian
then that realy [sic] is absurd.
I would avoid a sic -war as it be to no good purpose.
Originally Posted by theFijian
... if you want to sow doubt in the minds of those who 'know' there's no god by telling them that they live in the Matrix then that realy is absurd.
Where did the Matrix come from? This is more rhetorical invocation.
Gluadys, I don't know where you got the idea that what I proposed here as "sophisticated YEC" implies that God is not the Creator of everything. It just isn't in there. Of course sophisticated YEC has that God created everything.
Originally Posted by gluadys
The notion that we walk in a world that is an illusion, that the reality of things is veiled from us, is ...
There is no notion in sophisticated YEC that the world is an illusion. What we see, is. In sophisticated YEC, scientific inferences about the past, circa 4004 BC are incorrect. Dinosaur bones are real, but the long evolution of them is not. Evolution is a good scientific theory, and it is the correct scientific theory, because in science we must apply Occam's razor, which is to say, we must choose the simplest theory that explains the facts. However, Occam's razor has nothing to do with what is the truth. God could have created the world so that when the methodology of science is applied to the true observations of the actual, real, existing world, science must create a theory of evolution, even though the world began in 4004 BC.
I do not hold sophisticated YEC to be correct. I do know that there is absolutely no way that I can know that it is not correct. Let me go further. It is not my favourite way to interpret the Bible. But ... I cannot prove to someone who insists on a literal reading of Genesis that it is not true. For that reason, I should not, nor should anyone else, provoke YECers by trying to force them to let go of their interpretation of the Bible.
What we should do is attempt to make them stop attacking evolution and the theory of evolution because these things are science and science is all about models, which are correlations between what we observe.
Again, what we see is what is there. We see the dinosaur bones. They are there. They are real. We never saw the dinosaur die 70,000,000 years ago so whatever the truth is, we cannot have suffered an illusion. If I saw a tree, and then walked through it, I would say the tree was an illusion, but if I see a dinosaur bone, but no dinosaur lived 70,000,000 years ago, I have suffered no illusion. All that is wrong is that the scientific model does not correspond to the truth ... and yet, it is the correct model, and it is good science, because in science, we do not know what the truth is ... we just select the best model to explain our observations (the data).
Nobody is going to go to Hell for believing the Earth was created in 4004 BC. Neither is anyone going to Hell for thinking that the truths of Genesis were couched in terms of the Babylonian "scientific" model of creation, which has long since been updated. So let the YECers interpretation of Genesis live and concentrate on convincing him that when he attacks evolution, he is just attacking a model. Allowing him to retain YEC belief helps to relieve the YECer of the pressure which makes him feel he is beset by the forces of evil.
About illusion (an aside). We 'suffer illusions' about reality all the time. Look at a wall. It looks smooth, hard, and solid. According to science, that wall is more than 99.9% vacuum. Our senses are 'deceived'. Does this mean that the God who created this world is not the Christian God after all?
Last edited by Tom Cohoe; 28th October 2009 at 02:08 PM.
Reason: correct spelling, change 'it' to 'our observations (the data)'
Look carefully at the quotation at the top of my post. It was TheFijian whom I was quoting. I did have your post in mind when I wrote the post, but here, specifically, I was referring to The Fijian.
You refer again to confusion. The quotation I made of Jesus words, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, 'though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand.'", was once confusing to me. Now it isn't. Confusion is a state of mind, not an attribute of an idea. An idea is said to be confusing if the person contemplating it is confused about it. Further thought can clarify. When I first studied physics, I found many things confusing that I no longer suffer any confusion about (other things are still confusing).
There is nothing whatsoever confusing about "sophisticated YEC" to me. It may be confusing to you, but that is because you have not yet sufficiently contemplated it. I have thought about the things I am posting here for a long time, so what I am saying is clear to me. I cannot expect a few dozen paragraphs from me to dispel confusion from others. All I can say is that it is not confusing.
There is an important reason to understand what I am saying. That reason is that the image of Christianity among those whom we are to work at converting suffers from conflict between evolutionary scientists and YECers. If there is any way that we can allow YECers to hang on to what is sacred to them while letting them allow scientists to live in peace, then it will be of immense benefit to Christianity. It is right to let them hang on to YEC, because there is no logical demonstration that it is false.
Now, darklight, I see you quoting from the Bible to make your case. Do you not understand that that is exactly what YECers are doing? and that whatever you see as clear guidance from the Bible that it would be bad to let YEC survive, who can make a stronger claim than the YECers themselves that the bible says with stark clarity exactly what they believe?
They have an iron clad case if you are going on the Bible alone.
The Bible is for matters of theology. You were making a theological claim about God and confusion. Therefore, the Bible was used to challenge that claim. Also, I never said I see any clear guidance from the Bible that "it would be bad to let YEC survive." That observation comes from the observable consequences in society. Furthermore, I don't evaluate YECism on the Bible alone, as I showed in my post. A position that makes a claim that needs science to answer it is evaluated using science, as well as whatever else is required to evaluate. When we evaluate YECism using science, we come to the conclusion that it is not valid.
__________________ Causing confusion one avatar at a time.
Gluadys, I don't know where you got the idea that what I proposed here as "sophisticated YEC" implies that God is not the Creator of everything. It just isn't in there. Of course sophisticated YEC has that God created everything.
Yes it is there, and it is exactly what you are implying----that what we see is not God's creation.
There is no notion in sophisticated YEC that the world is an illusion. What we see, is.
You see what I mean? What we see is the world. If what we see is an illusion, we see a world that is an illusion. We see a world that God did not create. We see a world that has no substance of its own.
You cannot reconcile the scriptural witness that creation is revelation and then hold that what it reveals is an illusion.
In sophisticated YEC, scientific inferences about the past, circa 4004 BC are incorrect. Dinosaur bones are real, but the long evolution of them is not.
Again you are alleging that what we see is an illusion; after all we do not just see dinosaur bones in isolation from a great deal of other evidence that is just as real as the bones. If all the evidence is real, the age of the earth is real. If the age of the earth is an illusion, the dinosaur bone is also an illusion because it is evidence of the age of the earth and of the pathways of evolution in the past.
As was said earlier, you are trying to have your cake and eat it too.
God could have created the world so that when the methodology of science is applied to the true observations of the actual, real, existing world, science must create a theory of evolution, even though the world began in 4004 BC.
No way. If the "true observations" of "the actual real world" do not yield the actual date (within reason) of when the world began, then there is no way they can be observations of "the actual real world". They are not true observations, they are illusions. What looks to be the actual real world is not actual or real at all. It is illusory.
God may be author of the illusion, but in that case he is Brahman not Yahweh.
I do not hold sophisticated YEC to be correct. I do know that there is absolutely no way that I can know that it is not correct.
It is true there is no way you can know that it is not correct.
But you can know that it is not consistent with science.
And you can know that it is not consistent with the Judeo-Christian-Islamic doctrine of creation.
For me, that is sufficient reason to consider it incorrect.
Again, what we see is what is there. We see the dinosaur bones. They are there. They are real. We never saw the dinosaur die 70,000,000 years ago so whatever the truth is, we cannot have suffered an illusion.
What about the evidence that the dinosaur died 70 million years ago? Don't you have to treat it as an illusion in order to claim its demise was less than 7000 years ago? Evidence may mean nothing in an illusory world, but in an actual, real, created world it has significance.
If I saw a tree, and then walked through it, I would say the tree was an illusion, but if I see a dinosaur bone, but no dinosaur lived 70,000,000 years ago, I have suffered no illusion.
If the evidence points inescapably to the conclusion that the dinosaur bone is 70 million years old when it isn't, yes, you have suffered an illusion. What you have seen is not what is.
Nobody is going to go to Hell for believing the Earth was created in 4004 BC. Neither is anyone going to Hell for thinking that the truths of Genesis were couched in terms of the Babylonian "scientific" model of creation, which has long since been updated.
Actually, I don't think anyone cares two figs what YECs choose to believe. After all people believe a lot of strange things and it doesn't cause controversy in the church or society at large. You don't see much public debate on the teachings of Scientology for example.
What makes YEC controversial is not that it attracts followers, but that its followers want to give their beliefs some sort of official status of approval by having it presented in public schools. If they were content to pass on their beliefs to their children in their own private and home schools without asking to have them taught to my kids as well, we could all be happy.
About illusion (an aside). We 'suffer illusions' about reality all the time. Look at a wall. It looks smooth, hard, and solid. According to science, that wall is more than 99.9% vacuum. Our senses are 'deceived'. Does this mean that the God who created this world is not the Christian God after all?
Not quite the same thing. Yes, we "suffer illusions" all the time because our knowledge of reality is partial. But experience and inquiry and experiment and observation can clarify the nature of reality. If you can accept, on the basis of scientific modelling that a wall is 99.9% vacuum, you have no basis not to accept the 70 million year age of the dinosaur bone. The same sort of scientific observation goes into both conclusions.
Superficial appearance is generated by an underlying reality. I see a blue sky not because there is water above it (as the ancients thought) but because photons act as they do. But I have no reason to doubt that the photons are real nor any reason to doubt that what I see because of them is real. A tree is not just a conglomeration of photons impinging on my retina. It has a reality of its own which the photons are able to convey to my eyes and my brain.
In an illusory world, there is no basis for holding that any tree is there at all. Nor that anything I learn about the tree by studying it is real. There is not even any reason to hold that I am anything more than an illusory role that I have temporarily adopted.
__________________ The high, the low, all of creation God gives to humankind to use. If this privilege is misused, God's Justice permits creation to punish humanity~~ Hildegard of Bingen cited in, Earth Prayers from around the World
Ok, if God put a dinosaur bone in the ground 4004 years ago, how would that not be God's creation?
If all the evidence pointed to the bone being 70 million years old, then it is not a creation, it is an illusion. Furthermore, all the evidence is also an illusion. All of creation is an illusion.
In effect, what God "created" under this scenario is not a world with real bones in it, but an elaborate holodeck program in which we ourselves are holograms along with everything else we examine.
You have to take into account that creation is so tightly knit together that if you pull out one thread --or dinosaur bone--it all falls apart. The bone has a specific place in creation that includes its space-time coordinates.
The only way the dinosaur bone you describe could be part of a real created world is if the real created world had dinosaurs in it 4004 years ago. And that their existence at that time was confirmed by the evidence.
__________________ The high, the low, all of creation God gives to humankind to use. If this privilege is misused, God's Justice permits creation to punish humanity~~ Hildegard of Bingen cited in, Earth Prayers from around the World
Notice the first sentence from the earlier quote begins with "All you are proposing". Clearly, you are talking about what I am proposing. The second sentence begins "While that may be perfectly logical".
I am aware of what you said. The first sentence has an "is" in it. That would normally mean that there is an equivalence - an identity - between the first and second clauses. So whether you meant the 'that' in the second sentence to refer to the first clause or the second of the first sentence, because you have made them equivalent with an "is", you did say something that undeniably implies "that you understand, at least, that YEC can be perfectly logical" (which is how I put it).
It is you who wants to have your cake and eat it. For the purpose of denouncing, with no meaningful engagement, what I propose is to be equivalent to "omphalos". For the purpose of whether or not it is "perfectly logical" what I propose is not equivalent to "omphalos". Apparently, then, "omphalos" is "perfectly logical"; what I say is equivalent to "omphalos", but what I say is not "perfectly logical"?
Omphalos and YEC are two distinct entities, the former may be part of the latter but not by necessity. '...that may be perfectly logical' is what I said in reference to Omphalos, not in reference to YEC.
What you are proposing definitely is opmphalos, you just can't bring yourself to admit it. What if I'm an illusion? You are interacting with all these posts on an internet forum but perhaps there is no 'theFijian' ( maybe that's preferrable), perhaps there is no ChristianForums.com? How daft would you feel if that were true?
No I don't. I want to be able to say that YEC could be true and I want to say that evolution is good science.
YEC 'could' be true but only if evolution (amongst many other scientific fields) was bad science, hence Omphalos.
It is you who has invoked "omphalos", not me. It is just a rhetorical label which you have repeatedly incanted.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck ... etc
Where did the Matrix come from? This is more rhetorical invocation.
Apologies for pop culture reference, ie. "there is no spoon"
__________________
Give me Scotland or I die - John Knox
A mathematician confided
That a Möbius band is one-sided,
And you'll get quite a laugh,
If you cut one in half,
For it stays in one piece when divided!
If all the evidence pointed to the bone being 70 million years old, then it is not a creation, it is an illusion. Furthermore, all the evidence is also an illusion. All of creation is an illusion.
And if someone hit you with that bone, you would still say it was an illusion?
Originally Posted by gluadys
In effect, what God "created" under this scenario is not a world with real bones in it, but an elaborate holodeck program in which we ourselves are holograms along with everything else we examine.
You'd better be careful here if you want to stick with science. Have you heard of the holographic principal which "resolves the black hole information paradox within the framework of string theory? [from the Wikipedia article, the Holographic Principle - I am not allowed to put in links yet]". This theory, worked on by physicists from Gerard 't Hooft to Leonard Susskind, some of the dozen or so most famous physicists of our day, would describe the entire universe as a hologram on the surface of a sphere with a radius equivalent to the radius of the horizon of a black hole of the mass of the universe. That is, this theory has that everything, including you and me, is a gigantic holgram.
Other physicists (Steven Wolfram of Mathematica fame) analyze the systems of scientific study and even the entire universe as computational systems.
I cannot see your statement that if God put the bone in the ground and arranged it so that the creation was indetectable by science that it would be "not a creation" as anything but your fiat. I see nothing logically necessary about it.
Originally Posted by gluadys
You have to take into account that creation is so tightly knit together that if you pull out one thread --or dinosaur bone--it all falls apart. The bone has a specific place in creation that includes its space-time coordinates.
That's not a problem. Everything at 4004 BC would be in place and functioning exactly as it would have been if it had evolved in 13,000,000,000 years. There would be no difference in the world after 4004 (actually there would, but they are of no relevance to any objections I've seen so far). A scientist could theorize this, but Occam's razor would require him to choose the simplest theory, which would be the 13,000,000,000 year theory. Occam's razor does not give us the truth, it gives us the best model.
I do not like this idea myself. It has difficulties which haven't been mentioned here at all - not insurmountable difficulties - which have to do with what happens after 4004 BC. For example, in Genesis, there are 2 humans at that time. In the science, they are all over the Earth.
I am all but on your side. The only difference is that I know that I cannot logically disprove sophisticated YEC. Where I speak of YECers embarrassing Christianity, as for you, that is trying to force it to be taught in schools (in science classes). It is more than that. It is YECers participating, from a "creation science" point of view, in public debate at all. When YECers denounce TOE scientists in public, or even from the pulpit, they do harm to Christianity. "Creation science" institutions are harmful too (so is all the intelligent design stuff, BTW).
All I want is for YECers to understand that they can believe what they want about creation without any need to denounce science at all, and beyond that, if they do not want to read Genesis as anything but a literal account of creation, then they must do so in a way that keeps it out of science, and that the way to do it is the way I've outlined.
I've had long debates with a Baptist pastor friend in which I have sought hard to convince him that reading Genesis metaphorically need not threaten his salvation and I have also spent many hours trying to convince him that if he insists on reading Genesis literally, he can do so with a philosophy that leaves science absolutely alone, that science is behaving in the only way that it can, as outlined above.
I have participated in science forums in which we chased off YECers, so maybe I know a little bit about how damaging creation "science" is to Christianity. Who gives 2 figs about what they believe about Genesis, as you say. All that must go is creation "science".
That's what these posts are all about. There is a way to split the two and make it easier for the YECer to give up the "science" part.
It's philosophy for gosh sakes. It's not Hindu or Budhist or hologrammistic. There's nothing non Christian about it at all.
And no, I don't like it either. But if it helps stop YECers from trying to get legislatures to pass stupid laws, it would certainly be worthwhile.
Last edited by Tom Cohoe; 29th October 2009 at 07:18 PM.
Reason: correct grammar, insert restrictive clarification, insert 'For example', other additions, deleted a redundant word
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