My Omphalos Challenge

[AV1611VET]

Oh look!!! It's "My Challenge" thread time!!!

Let's get starting those new threads, folks! Remember, the title has to be in the "My Challenge" format, or you're out.

I gotta million of 'em! --- Jimmy Durante.

 

[ReverendDG]

Show me how the Omphalos Hypothesis is deceptive without disrespecting a literal interpretation of Genesis 1.

• The intent of this thread is to show that one would have to deny a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 in order to claim Omphalism.

i'm confused, do you even know what omphalos really says? i'm questioning whether you do really
considering omphalos is about the genesis story how can it conflict with it?
all omphalos says is that the earth appears older than it really is. genesis itself never states how old the earth is, so i don't know why you think there is a problem there

now claiming that the earth is somehow both old and young at the same time, while a majority of people analyzing the earth, using gods creations finds its older than what religious people claims it is, makes god into a lier
why does god make it seem older than it is? theres no point, it just makes god look deceitful

by the way AV, if you insist on complaining that people keep bringing up everything past genesis 1, then you are being a hypocrite by bringing up the 6000 date, since genesis 1 doesn't say how old the earth is
it does say the earth was created in six days, but not how long ago that was.

 

[milkyway]

I don't need to look around. I have you guys right here telling me the Egyptian Empire - (which came from Noah's grandson) - predated the Flood.

I don't need your junk interpretations of what went on long ago.

Just about everything you use in your daily life - quite possibly the reason why you are still alive - is thanks to science.

Yet you reject some of it in favour of a bronze age view of creation. Inconsistent, is it not?

 

[AV1611VET]

i'm confused, do you even know what omphalos really says?

Yes.

i'm questioning whether you do really
considering omphalos is about the genesis story how can it conflict with it?

Don't worry --- I know what it is.

all omphalos says is that the earth appears older than it really is.

Correct --- Omphalos is embedded history.

genesis itself never states how old the earth is...

True.

...so i don't know why you think there is a problem there

I'm not stating a problem - I'm stating a challenge.

now claiming that the earth is somehow both old and young at the same time, while a majority of people analyzing the earth, using gods creations finds its older than what religious people claims it is, makes god into a lier

No, it doesn't. Before you accuse God of being a liar, you need to subject age to the Law of Non-contradiction and see if it passes. If it does (which it does), then no contradiction has occurred. In the case of the earth, it is [physically] 4.57 billion years old and [existentially] 6100 years old. Had age not passed the Law of Non-contradiction, the earth would "be" [physically] 4.57 billion years old and [physically] 6100 years old. For a better understanding of this, q.v. here.

why does god make it seem older than it is?

He didn't. Take Adam for example. God made Adam [arbitrarily] 30 years old. He didn't make Adam to just seem 30 years old, He made Adam to be 30 years old.

theres no point, it just makes god look deceitful

No, it doesn't. A deceitful God wouldn't detail what He did, when He did it, how He did it, where He did it, why He did it, and who the eyewitnesses were. And again, there's no law [of non-contradiction] being broken, so there's no reason to resort to an accusation of deceit.

by the way AV, if you insist on complaining that people keep bringing up everything past genesis 1, then you are being a hypocrite by bringing up the 6000 date, since genesis 1 doesn't say how old the earth is

I actually agree with this [sans hypocrisy]. It takes the whole Bible, plus another 2000 years of secular documentation to arrive at 6100 years.

it does say the earth was created in six days, but not how long ago that was.

Indeed.

 

[AV1611VET]

Just about everything you use in your daily life - quite possibly the reason why you are still alive - is thanks to science.

To take it a step further --- thanks to God, Who gives us those scientists.

Yet you reject some of it in favour of a bronze age view of creation. Inconsistent, is it not?

No --- scientists reject science as well. (I think it's called peer review?)

 

[milkyway]

To take it a step further --- thanks to God, Who gives us those scientists.



No --- scientists reject science as well. (I think it's called peer review?)

Peer review IS science - without it you get pseudoscience, so it's a fundamental misunderstanding to say scientists 'reject' science through peer review.

 

[ClearSky]

"Omphalos" is misleading because the hypothesis goes beyond Adam's navel.

The real question is not why Adam was created as a 30 years old or the earth was created as billions years old. Both were necessary for nature to work at all.

The question is why did God go beyond these requirements, and for instance also created the light of supernovae that occurred millions of years before the universe was created. Adam didn't care about supernovae, so there was no real reason for God to create them. Or was it?

All scientific observations hint that the earth and life was not caused by a physical creation process. This is obviously the way how God created the universe: Not only for making a working environment for Adam, but also for hiding the existence of a creator to later generations.

The real question is: Why? There is no clear answer, but several ideas.

For instance: God's intention could have been to promote Atheism. After all, He probably doesn't believe that He himself was created. So, in the usual definition, God Himself is an Atheist. He wanted us to be in His image, so He had to take some precautions for initiating the idea of Atheism - not believing in a creator, and being self-responsible for one's existence - in humankind.

Of course, that's just a hypothesis.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

I'm going to ignore the past five pages, because I'm an arrogant git

Show me how the Omphalos Hypothesis is deceptive without disrespecting a literal interpretation of Genesis 1.

• The intent of this thread is to show that one would have to deny a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 in order to claim Omphalism.

1) The Universe looks 12-13 billion years old.
2) Your interpretation of the Bible implies that the universe is 6100 years old.
3) Therefore, God created/altered the universe to look far older than it is.

NB: the three major events (the Creation, the Fall, and the Flood) cannot be used as a rebuttle (i.e., you can't say "The universe only looks billions of years old because of event x"). Consider:

The universe just after the Creation is exactly as God intended it to be, so any deception comes straight from God. So perhaps things look older than they are because of the Fall? No.

The universe may very well have changed in some arbitrary way during the Fall, but this change is again a direct act of God: things only went knees up for humanity because God cursed us. That is, things only changed because God decided to curse us for our oh-so naughty insolence.
So maybe it was the Flood? No.

If it were possible for the Flood to be just a mundane downpoar (albiet on unprecidented scales) without any divine intervention, then this wouldn't account for the apparent antiquity of the Earth: a load of water doesn't cause radiometric dating methods to converge several billion years too far in the past.
So maybe the Flood had divine intervention? Well, that's possible, but it falls foul like the explanations above: any change in the dates would result from God's direct action.

So what I'm trying to say is that any miraculous explanation for the discrepency between the universe's apparent age and the universe's actual age runs straight into the Omphalos 'problem'.
That said, I'd love to hear natural explanations (i.e., ones that don't invoke divinities) for it.

Futhermore, I daresay I've not disrespected the literalist interpretation of Genesis 1 (a bizarre requirement, but whatever).

One final note: AV, I've assumed that a) 'a literal interpretation of Genesis 1' equates to your interpreation of Genesis 1, and b) your proposed age of the universe hasn't changed since I last saw it (Ussher's 6100 years).

Phew.

 

[AV1611VET]

Peer review IS science - without it you get pseudoscience, so it's a fundamental misunderstanding to say scientists 'reject' science through peer review.

Oh, I don't know --- I submit some scientific tome for peer review, and it comes back REJECTED, I'd say that's science rejecting science. How can something be pseudoscience without being science first?

 

[AV1611VET]

For instance: God's intention could have been to promote Atheism. After all, He probably doesn't believe that He himself was created.

God's Son says otherwise ---

[bible]Mark 13:19[/bible]

--- and Jesus was begotten, not created.

[bible]John 3:16[/bible]

 

[AV1611VET]

One final note: AV, I've assumed that a) 'a literal interpretation of Genesis 1' equates to your interpreation of Genesis 1...

It's the other way around.

 

[milkyway]

Oh, I don't know --- I submit some scientific tome for peer review, and it comes back REJECTED, I'd say that's science rejecting science. How can something be pseudoscience without being science first?

No! The scientific method can refute a hypothesis, idea, experimental data etc. - that's not rejecting science, it's upholding the scientific method.

Pseudoscience either does not lend itself to be tested by the scientific method (e.g. Intelligent Design (sic)), or rejects the method and ploughs on regardless (homeopathy perhaps?!)

 

[ClearSky]

God's Son says otherwise ---

According to the Trinity doctrine, Father and Son are of the same essence, but they are not identical. God could be an Atheist and His son could be a Jew.

 

[FishFace]

That's why I stipulated without history.

Is it deceptive to say I baked a cake without sugar?

• Maturity without history.
• Cake without sugar.

See the correlation?

What about if you said you baked a cake without flour? What about if you said you baked a cake without any ingredients?

What if you said you knew a wife without a spouse? A triangle without any sides?

 

[FishFace]

Something wrong, AV?

Oh, I know what you said. But something you said has to be wrong, logically speaking.

Here's a simpler way of looking at it without getting into all your redefining of age, and non-defining of embedded age.

Claim 1:

If something looks old, then that indicates that it has existed, more or less, for the same amount of time as it appears to have.

There is one exception that you have brought up so far,
and that is the bicycle. So, I reject claim 1 and present Claim 2:

If something looks old, then that indicates that it, or all the parts of it that look old, have existed, more or less, for the same amount of time as it, or they, appear to have.

So, since parts of the earth look old, that is indicative of their time in existence. Notice that we're not bringing age into it, so it doesn't matter what you do with English over there. You either have to deny that appearance of age is indicative of existence - something that you probably don't want to do since it's rather handy for all sorts of things - or you have to admit that God is a deceiver.

 

[FishFace]

Not proud of what did happen last time, AV?

Oh really? You remember what happened last time you want with "standard dictionary definitions?" That's right - you got pwned and abandoned thread.

Maturity without history is, upon examining the definitions, just the same as looking old without being old.

 

[AV1611VET]

Oh, I know what you said. But something you said has to be wrong, logically speaking.

Here's a simpler way of looking at it without getting into all your redefining of age, and non-defining of embedded age.

Claim 1:

If something looks old, then that indicates that it has existed, more or less, for the same amount of time as it appears to have.

There is one exception that you have brought up so far,
and that is the bicycle. So, I reject claim 1 and present Claim 2:

If something looks old, then that indicates that it, or all the parts of it that look old, have existed, more or less, for the same amount of time as it, or they, appear to have.

So, since parts of the earth look old, that is indicative of their time in existence. Notice that we're not bringing age into it, so it doesn't matter what you do with English over there. You either have to deny that appearance of age is indicative of existence - something that you probably don't want to do since it's rather handy for all sorts of things - or you have to admit that God is a deceiver.

Something wrong, AV?

Not proud of what did happen last time, AV?

I just get tired of repeating myself over and over, that's all. You want to talk about everything but Genesis 1, and it gets old after awhile.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

It's the other way around.

Well, I did say equates. The beauty of an equation is that it works both ways. 'A = B' is the same as 'B = A'. I do like how you reduced my post down to that one sentence though.

 

[AV1611VET]

I do like how you reduced my post down to that one sentence though.

Awl righty --- let's go over it again, then:

I'm going to ignore the past five pages, because I'm an arrogant git

What's a "git" --- or do I want to know?

1) The Universe looks 12-13 billion years old.
2) Your interpretation of the Bible implies that the universe is 6100 years old.
3) Therefore, God created/altered the universe to look far older than it is.

1) That's because it is 12-13 billion years old.
2) No, it doesn't. It shows that the universe has only been in existence for 6100 years.
3) God created the universe to be as old as it looks. It just doesn't look that old --- it is that old.

 

[AV1611VET]

Well, I did say equates. The beauty of an equation is that it works both ways. 'A = B' is the same as 'B = A'. I do like how you reduced my post down to that one sentence though.

Ya --- I caught that too --- I just wanted to make it clear which one is A, and which one is B.