Hypothetical: Creationism becomes standard in science classes

[Queller]

They are not proved wrong. It is only Occam's razor that causes us to use the model with the simpler mathematics. But the world's oldest computer works by Greek geometry, where the math of the earth at center is simpler, and it does just fine. It is strictly cultural choice.

Let me change the focus of the question: Can you find one application useful to us today where the age of the earth, the sky, or the nature of physical forces 6000 years ago would make a difference?

Sure. Science.

 

[bhsmte]

I was there when science discovered fats are bad to eat. Now I am there that they have discovered they are not. Same for sugar being good for you. Same for the "truth" I was taught that the Great Pyramid does not contain the constant pi.

We do not discover, we oscillate between perceptions. Eccl. 1:9-11.

Science adjusts when new or better evidence becomes available. Science doesn't pretend to prove anything, it goes with the weight of the evidence at any particular time. That is a good thing, not a bad thing.

 

[bhsmte]

Should be a prerequisite for research scientists. (Most of the math teaching I do is to adults but at the high school level. Most adults have no math skills. I often wonder if it their hatred for science that causes this. But remember, I am speaking of the USA, where all the freedom of religion started.)

Well, my obvious point was; psychology becomes much more involved in personal beliefs, the less objective evidence there is to support the belief.

 

[Queller]

I was there when science discovered fats are bad to eat. Now I am there that they have discovered they are not.

Actually some fats are still bad for you and some are not. That is an example of science refining itself as more evidence becomes available. Exactly how it should be.

What do you believe is wrong with this process?

 

[bhsmte]

Actually some fats are still bad for you and some are not. That is an example of science refining itself as more evidence becomes available. Exactly how it should be.

What do you believe is wrong with this process?

Correct. Saturated fats (animal fats) are still something to keep at a minimum. And the other poster stated science stated sugar was good for you, which science has never promoted as being the case. Science has discovered, carbohydrates and foods that spike insulin levels, can promote fat storage and should be kept to lower consumption rates. That is, unless one is very active and they end up burning these types of sugar, before they can be stored as fat.

 

[Ken Behrens]

Working with the 4th dimension doesn't help you, since if you want to say that light escapes the 3rd dimension completely (btw, does a sphere lose it's second dimension in obtaining a third?), that wreaks processes in the universe necessary for life even worse if they have none of the properties of the 3rd dimension retained.


You assert without evidence, or even a bible verse.


The range is exceedingly narrow, and we live in a dynamic universe.


Mathematical models do well for that, which is why I know life as we know it requires pretty specific physics. Usually, just changing gravity a little wreaks stuff in a major way. And you want these constants to change a lot more than by a small fraction. Not only that, but you want them to fluctuate, which has never been observed.


People are often wrong, removing the human element as much as possible of course is the logical solution, but that just makes relying on science logical, not the process itself logic based.


You are assuming that those words imply singularities, something you would never get from anything described as formless and void. That sounds more like "outside" the universe to me, if I were to modernize it. Since the universe started as one singularity that expanded out, expanding "form" in the place of "void".

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

What is the evidence the universe started as one singularity?

 

[Astrophile]

Yes, I would. I would also teach Pliny's refutation that they are in error because they deny the gods their personalities.

Can you give me a reference for this? It isn't in my copy of Natural History, nor have I been able to find it on the Internet.

 

[Ken Behrens]

1. It isn't any more supposition that the physical constants have changed than it is that our sun is doing exactly the same thing here and now as they were doing there and then billions of light years ago that far away from us.

2. Logic doesn't analyse anything btw. For the purposes of scientific investigation, whatever you've been told about anything, God or otherwise, can be safely set to one side if it can't be verified with your own observations and experiments (fyi, reading what some unknown author wrote thousands of years ago is not an observation or experiment).

3..Well, as much as they don't say it, it might as well be proven fact. also, I agree with Astrophile here, and he explains this perfectly...

4. Newton's Theory of Gravity is another theory that wasn't entirely accurate. As Gould said, "Einstein's Theory of Gravity replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome, and man descended from ape-like creatures whether we did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism, or some other way yet to be discovered." - Even if the current scientific views on the age of Earth, Universe, Atomic Theory, Germ Theory, Einstein's Theory of Relativity or the Theory of Evolution aren't entirely accurate, the corrections will be minor and the broad underlying principles they eschew wouldn't be fundamentally altered, let alone discarded for an entirely nonsensical view of a 6,000 to 10,000 year old earth and universe, with 'kinds' created in their original forms, etc.

4. Okay. A few things here, Much of the world's uranium reserves are in paleozoic unconformity type deposits, that is to say, in layers of earth between 2.6Gya and 0.5Gya. Most of these uranium deposits are further narrowed down to either 2.6Gya or between 1.6Gya and 1.2Gya timeframes. Prospecting for pretty much anything in the ground is now observant of a community database that records the layers of exposed rock, their age and where they are all over the world. Oil deposits in particular are dependent on buried biomass accumulation over millions of years, an accurate knowledge of the age and location of a prehistoric swampland, marshland or oceanic microbial flourish is a huge advantage in today's highly competitive oil and liquid petroleum industry. If you think mining and oil companies just wander out of their cities and just start looking around randomly, then you're about 150 years out of date. Through this science, these companies have been able to supply our civilizations ever insatiable thirst for fossil fuels and mineral resources with ever increasing efficiency in refining and accuracy in identifying the next crude oil or resource deposit.

5. A side note - it takes about 20 metric tonnes of plant matter to get a kilo of crude oil. (There's about 3.2kg in a gallon btw...) -this would be almost 2500 tonnes of plant life per barrel of crude oil. At the end of 2015, we were consuming around 97million barrels of crude a day. The amount of plant and animal matter required in a 6,000-10,000 year old earth to get just a year full of oil we use (that's just over 35 billion barrels) is absurdity of the highest order, that's not even considering the amount of time required to get these deposits...

6. So you're ignorant on the value of studying ice cores? Colour me surprised. The scientific community hasn't any requirement to "prove that the earth is old", so that nonsense can be set to one side. We can map out the climate from these ice cores for the last 680,000 years and we've found ice cores that go back to 1.5Mya. The most accurate and researched ice core is of course the Vostok ice cores, these date back to 150,000 years and have been dated using at least 5 independent methods, all correlating to the same result. From this, we've been able to map out, as you say, global climate over that time. If you dispute that these ice cores are accurate, I'd be interested to know why past the standard YEC's "Scientists might be wrong" dismissal.

7. According to Genesis 1:1, God's first act was to create the heaven and the earth, light came after that. Apart from that, everything else you've said here seems creative & ad-hoc. As I mentioned earlier, singularities would leave tell-tale signs - in the same way we know where black holes are even though we can't see them. A singularity that warps light & distance to the extent you are trying to suppose would be about as obvious as an intergalactic boot to the head.

1. Agreed both are supposition. That is my point.
2. No one can verify what happened a million years ago. All we can do is verify what is here today that suggests something specific happened a million years ago. What someone wrote can be sued to verify that at least someone else had a different way of interpreting some observation.
3. The observations are more or less proven (pending proper verification in some cases). The theories are not.
4. That is what we call the layer, that is true. But that reflects the theory. We could call the layers red, yellow blue, or ABC, and get the same net result for the purpose of locating uranium.
5. Yes, that is the length of time necessary to get that fossil fuel if done today.
6. I am not ignorant that ice core samples are quite valuable for studying climate variation in ancient times. Actually, so is archeological research into things like Viking settlements. What I am not aware of is why climate prior to 1000AD matters to today.
7. If a singularity is far from any matter, the only tell tale sign will be the slowing of light that comes near it. And that is what I propose we allow for - that the light we are saying is old is passing through such a singularity.

 

[Ken Behrens]

1. We don't? We know that fundamental changes in the physical forces would leave evidence behind. We don't see that evidence. Therefore we have a reasonable basis to suppose that the fundamental physical forces haven't changed.

2. That still doesn't determine whether the speed of light is actually slowing down or our measurements are getting more precise.

According to this article, scientists may have some evidence that the speed of light has decreased by "0.00072 +/- 0.00018 % over the past 6-10 billion years".

Not really enought to fit 14 billions years of the universe's existence into 6,000 years.

3. How convenient.

3. If the Flood occurred after human history, why do we have so many records from civilizations whose history starts before the Flood and continues right through it with no mention of a worldwide flood?

4. So we shouldn't trust any observation we make on the basis that there might be something we don't know about that is affecting that observation?

5. Theories and facts are two different things. The fact of evolution is that populations of organisms change over time. The Theory of Evolution is the best supported theory for why the fact of evolution happens.

1. If we believe that nothing has changed, how can we be certain a change would leave evidence?
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.
4. I sure don't trust anything I see 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.
5. The best supported theory will depend on the other facts that help select the theory. So who selects what facts to use?

 

[Ken Behrens]

Let me rephrase it then.

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

Experience shows that most people use whatever pleases them.

 

[Ken Behrens]

Sure. Science.

Being used to achieve what?

 

[Ken Behrens]

Science adjusts when new or better evidence becomes available. Science doesn't pretend to prove anything, it goes with the weight of the evidence at any particular time. That is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Yes it is a good thing. But that's not what I see happening here. i see science claiming that one particular theory is proved.

 

[Ken Behrens]

Well, my obvious point was; psychology becomes much more involved in personal beliefs, the less objective evidence there is to support the belief.

But the beliefs of recipients are an important observable fact.

 

[Ken Behrens]

Actually some fats are still bad for you and some are not. That is an example of science refining itself as more evidence becomes available. Exactly how it should be.

What do you believe is wrong with this process?

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

 

[Ken Behrens]

Can you give me a reference for this? It isn't in my copy of Natural History, nor have I been able to find it on the Internet.

Just spent 20 minutes. I couldn't find it either. I am also looking for a great one for this thread about how earth is the pivot between gravity and three other things. It's a great unified field theory from ancient Rome. That's the problem with how old I am. A lot of this was done 30 years ago. My memory is not faulty, I just could not save all the notes for chapter and verse.

 

[VirOptimus]

But the beliefs of recipients are an important observable fact.

The thing you are doing, mixing science and belief leads to bad science and bad theology.

Science is just a way of describing physical reality. Trying to ignore physical reality is a futile battle.

 

[Landon Caeli]

The thing you are doing, mixing science and belief leads to bad science and bad theology.

Science is just a way of describing physical reality. Trying to ignore physical reality is a futile battle.

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.

 

[juvenissun]

Young Earth Creationism?
Old Earth Creationism?
Day-Age Creationism?
Gap Theory Creationism?
Progressive Creationism?
'Embedded Age' Creationism?
'Past State' Creationism?
Intelligent Design Creationism?
Theistic Evolution (which, as certain people are fond of pointing out, is technically a form of creationism)?

All these have something in common. That is what should be included.

 

[Paul of Eugene OR]

. . . what we call light is a 3rd dimensional cross section of four dimensional reality. . . .

Are you speaking of Einsteinian space-time here as your four dimensional environment for the phenomenon of light?

 

[bhsmte]

Yes it is a good thing. But that's not what I see happening here. i see science claiming that one particular theory is proved.

Which theory would that be?