Hypothetical: Creationism becomes standard in science classes

[bhsmte]

But the beliefs of recipients are an important observable fact.

Yes, I observe many on this site with many different religion beliefs and that is reality. Of course, this has no bearing on whether any of the beliefs are aligned with well evidenced reality and or are true. With that said, if having certain beliefs makes someone a better person and better able to cope with life, by all means hold onto them.

 

[Queller]

1. If we believe that nothing has changed, how can we be certain a change would leave evidence?

Seriously? You do know we can run tests on things like the speed of light and determine the affects of a drastically higher speed of light would have, right?

2. That is correct.
3. This was a typo. My apologies. The flood occurs after human history begins, but before writing is developed enough to leave accurate written records.

??? The usual claim is that the Flood occurred 4,000 years ago and we have Sumerian and Egyptian histories that start around 5,000 years ago and continue unbroken right through the time of the Flood.

4. I sure don't trust anything I see in real life.

Don't you read the Bible in real life?

Most of what I have read is that we only see a percentage of what is there, and our brain fills in the details from its past experience.

Where did you read this?

5. The best supported theory will depend on the other facts that help select the theory. So who selects what facts to use?

The people who conduct actual scientific tests and determine which hypotheses are supported and which aren't.

It certainly isn't done by looking at the Bible and saying "scientific experiments disagree with my interpretation of the Bible, therefore the experiments are wrong."

 

[Queller]

Experience shows that most people use whatever pleases them.

You have a real hard time answering a direct question, don't you?

I'll try one more time;

Shouldn't we have a reasonable basis to suppose both are wrong? Otherwise it is just a "what if" scenario.

 

[Queller]

Being used to achieve what?

Examples have already been given to you: Ice cores, uranium mining, oil prospecting, bacteria resistance, etc.

To give you one example of, studying ice cores from thousands of years ago can give us insight into how our weather patterns are different today and how they could be changing in the future.

 

[Queller]

The experimental facts change depending on who is paying for the experiment.

Got any evidence that scientists (who are usually neutral) are being paid to come up with a given result?

 

[VirOptimus]

Like the reality that our end includes becoming insect food? We should teach that first in elementry science classes -that our inevidable end result is that all we strive for will have been for nothing in the end, and that we ultimately are nothing more than aweful smelling bug food.

I'm not sure what your point is. The above certainly have nothing to do with what I posted.

 

[quatona]

Guys: Stop talking about evolution. For the purposes of this hypothetical, it's already been defeated. You've won. You get to teach an alternative. So what do you teach, and how do you get the entire creationist movement to agree on it?

You knew that these questions can´t and won´t be answered. So don´t complain.

 

[mark kennedy]

Guys: Stop talking about evolution. For the purposes of this hypothetical, it's already been defeated. You've won. You get to teach an alternative. So what do you teach, and how do you get the entire creationist movement to agree on it?

I'd say the time line is the only thing that would be different. Starting about 6,000 years ago life fully formed starts to evolve. I think contrasting it with the gradualism of Darwinian evolution would be helpful. The molecular mechanisms would already be in place at creation and it probably wouldn't be called evolution, it would be more like devolution.

 

[Landon Caeli]

I'm not sure what your point is. The above certainly have nothing to do with what I posted.

Just looking for some answers, thats all. NM.

 

[VirOptimus]

Just looking for some answers, thats all. NM.

Answers? What is the question?

 

[Landon Caeli]

Answers? What is the question?

Sorry I was on a rant and cross threaded. NM. It truly doesn't belong here.

 

[PsychoSarah]

I've got 30 alerts, so I'll try to keep this going as best as I can. You sound like you know your stuff, and have given this some thought.

Don't overestimate my physics knowledge. I have taken a few college classes of it, sure, but I'm no expert. It's not even my major. I had to give a lot of thought into my response, that's true enough.

No, what we call light is a 3rd dimensional cross section of four dimensional reality. The 2nd dimension of a sphere gets curved when it becomes 3D.

So the properties of the lower dimensions continue to exist, but warp a bit when looking at higher dimensions? Interesting if accurate, but I doubt this would forgo the properties that light has in the 3rd dimension.

I am trying to develop a workable model to include the scientific observations of the last 50 or so years, without leaving behind the Scriptural understanding. Moving to a higher dimension is one possibility.

Many people on here try to do that. However, it'd be a lot easier on yourself to consider more of scripture to be allegorical than to try to take it literally. Heck, the bible never explicitly states the age of the Earth or universe, people derive that number by counting back through the generations of individuals in the bible. Given that the modern text is hardly complete, it would be fair to suggest that some of those generations are missing. Furthermore, no change in dimension is going to help you reconcile the various biological errors of the bible, or its internal inconsistencies. You aren't dealing with observations of the last 50 years, there are parts in that book known to be incorrect since ancient times, like how it gets the amount of pi incorrect.

I agree the range is narrow, but let me ask you this: How does God see everyone who ever lived all at the same time?

Asking a person that doesn't believe in deities this question is rather odd, since I don't ascribe qualities or powers to things which I don't believe exist. From a fantasy standpoint, magic, why not?

Fluctuations may be part of higher dimensional catastrophes, and not regular occurrences. Like one happened at creation of Adam, another at the fall, a third at the flood, etc. People were too busy with other matters to observe anything.

Scripture never claims that any of these events caused a change in physics. In fact, scripture often implies that the world is highly stable and unchanging. Something that your change in light speed notably lacks is a point. Slowing down the speed of light after established life already exists complicates matters and could lead to the universe falling completely apart, why would a deity bother?

What is the evidence the universe started as one singularity?

The background radiation of the universe and the fact that we can observe the expansion of the universe and trace it back to a single point.

 

[Loudmouth]

I've already addressed radiohalos.

They completely destroy your "created with age" nonsense.

 

[Loudmouth]

But just suppose both are wrong. If space bends outside our solar system, we could be fooled in the triangulation, as we are when observing something under water. Speed of light, and/or time, could be different farther out as well, and all such measurements could be wrong. [I know flat earth theorists argue the same way about the location of the magnetic poles. but we can reach the poles and prove them wrong. We cannot reach the end of the galaxy.]

Sorry, but making up stories about how space is different in undetectable ways does not make the data disappear.

I do not completely understand the mechanics of decay, but I would assume that decay could affect the bending of time, and give us false information in the same way.

Decay would be the same within all frames of reference.

My point is another theory can be raised.

You don't have a theory. You have made up stories with nothing to back them.

 

[Loudmouth]

Theories are never ending.

You don't have a theory. You have stuff you have made up. Those are not the same thing.

The Mayan Bible talks about tremendous amounts of hot rock falling from the sky during the flood. I have a suggestion that gopher is a technological term (from Fasold and consistent with the story of Enmerkar and the Lords of Arattu) for concrete impregnated with metal filings, thus creating shielding from the magnetism, but not, of course the heat. So let's suggest that 1. the heat was part of a magnetic storm, and the ark was lucky enough to be in the eye of said storm (as opposed to a thousand other arks with guys in them with other names that did in fact die in the flood). 2. The large amount of water cooled things off.

None of those are theories.

A theory is a set of hypotheses that have been scientifically tested and supported by data. You don't have that.

Ultimately, the choice of creationism or science is a cultural choice of what data is more important.

You have made up stories, not data.

 

[Loudmouth]

In the same way the curvature of earth affects the route taken by an airplane coming here; if not allowed for by selecting the great circle route, the trip takes longer. Or perhaps the negative of that, depending on the location and curvature of the bend.

If you took a sample of a radioactive isotope onto an airplane and measured its decay from inside the plane during multiple flights, at no time would you ever see the decay change.

Suppositions is indeed the magic word. And it is how scientists create their picture of the past as well.

No, it isn't. They use data and observations, not made up stories.

 

[Loudmouth]

No, I would teach that different people see different things, and question why this is so, and how we can determine the truth for ourselves.

The problem is that you are trying to discount things people have seen with stuff you have made that no one has ever seen. Do you see the problem?

 

[Loudmouth]

I am trying to develop a workable model to include the scientific observations of the last 50 or so years, without leaving behind the Scriptural understanding.

That's like trying to create a workable model to include the last 50 years an animal behavioral science without leaving behind the literary understanding in the book "Animal Farm".

As Galileo is credited for saying, the Bible is a book on how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. Your first mistake would be treating the Bible as a science book.

 

[Loudmouth]

Experience shows that most people use whatever pleases them.

Just because you use whatever pleases you does not mean that other people do as well.

 

[grasping the after wind]

Why do we want to teach things that are not absolutely provable in a science class? To advance an agenda. For Creationist it is a religious agenda for Evolutionists it is a religiously held philosophical agenda. The origin of the universe and how reality is constructed is still too unknown to make any categorical statements about. I would suggest we simply state that fact and/ or present a few alternative POVs on the subject and even allow the instructor to state plainly which POV he/she ascribes to and why rather than insisting that only our own biased view be the allowed to be uttered in a classroom. I cannot understand the abject fear by some people of the possibility that some other POV might be heard as well as their own. To me that shows a lack of condifidence in one's own POV.