Science vs. Evolution

[AV1611VET]

Believing in a flat earth is like believing that bugs bunny is the president of the US and he is alive.

And who believed in a flat earth back then?

Were scientists exempt from this line-of-sight anomaly?

cartoon physics is what made the US lag behind the rest of the world in primary and secondary education standards.

Riiiiight.

The big bang and subsequent creation of the elements in the cauldrons of the stars is what gave me air to breathe!

Sounds witchy to me.

 

[Nathan Poe]

And who believed in a flat earth back then?

Nobody who'd ever sailed in a boat, really. The flat-Earth argument doesn't really help any side of the debate.

 

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Nobody who'd ever sailed in a boat, really. The flat-Earth argument doesn't really help any side of the debate.

I agree with your last point but amazingly enough the monk Cosmas Indicopleustes had been a sailor.
Cosmas Indicopleustes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Christian Topography - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[lucaspa]

Who "discovered" the flat-earth paradigm? Observers? Scientists? Both?

There were no "scientists" as we know them back then. But I think you are missing the point, AV. The point is that Christians let extrabiblical evidence tell them that their interpretation of parts of scripture were wrong.

As Frumious Bandersnatch (yea Niven) pointed out, Christians did use a literal reading of several Biblical verses to conclude that the Bible said that the earth was flat, and wrote Christian Topography from that.

However, later Christians let evidence from outside the Bible -- science if you will -- override that interpretation of those verses. They dropped that interpretation. It happened again with several verses that say, in plain Hebrew, that the earth does not move. Copernicus hypothesized that the earth did move in an orbit around the sun. Much of the opposition came from Christians unwilling to change the interpretation of those verses.

But here you are and you would never consider challenging heliocentrism and you have no problem interpreting those verses in a non-literal way. Or just ignoring them.

So now we come to Genesis 1-3. Again we have extrabiblical evidence contradicting an interpretation of scripture. Only this time you insist science is wrong, not the interpretation. WHY? Why are these verses so different from the flat earth or immovable earth verses? Why cannot you change the interpretation of Genesis 1-3?

If you dismiss the creation event then you are dismissing biology, chemistry, atoms, medicine, physics, etc.

Honestly, you are not. You are just accepting the atheistic statement of faith that the processes discovered by science operate on their own. You are also believing one of the alternative hypotheses for the origin of the universe than "God created". Once you make those 2 changes, biology, chemistry, etc. remain unchanged.

Rejecting evolution, now, and insisting on a young earth does require dismissing all everything you list.

The fundamental laws of physics and the constants that allow for the physical world to exist operate by permission.

That's our belief. It's not a fact. I correct Hespera when she makes statements of faith as tho they are fact. The same applies here. Christian belief is that God sustains all those laws of physics; they only operate because God wills them to operate each and every time.

But that is a belief. There's nothing in science to contradict such a belief, or to support the opposing belief that the laws of physics operate on their own. That is a major reason why science is agnostic.

 

[lucaspa]

Believing in a flat earth is like believing that bugs bunny is the president of the US and he is alive.

Today. That is true today. But go back 3,000 years and flat earth was the reigning scientific theory.

The big bang and subsequent creation of the elements in the cauldrons of the stars is what gave me air to breathe!

That does not negate that God gave us the air you breathe. All it says is how God gave you air to breathe. Tanzanos, hidden in your statement is the basic statement of faith of atheism: "natural" = without God. Because you have a series of "natural" processes like nucleosynthesis and chemistry, you think God is excluded. But there's nothing in science to back that faith.

Perhaps you could ask me something more realistic like When was the Bible written? Of course the answer is 399 years ago!

Of course it is not. That would be 1611. That may be when the King James Version was translated from the Hebrew and Greek into English, but the various books of the Bible were written from 1500 to 2300 years before that. And some of the oral traditions behind the first written version go back even further.

 

[Cabal]

Sounds witchy to me.

Gathering firewood yet?

 

[Cassiterides]

Do you really think that these primative cultures existed right along side of the much more advanced Egyptian culture? I can only ask you to stop and think about how absurd this claim is. We are not talking about some people living off in isolation somewhere. We are talking about cultures that were in the same area at an earlier time. There were no primative hunter gatherers living in dynastic Egypt. The usual YEC claim is that all Egyptians are descended from Mizriam. Were these primative hunter gatherers his children or his grandchildren?

I just gave you classical documentation of primitive cultures co-existing at the same time as the ancient egyptians.

If these peoples existed they lived in isolation just as the few remaining primative cultures that exist today do. They did not live right in the middle of much more advanced cultures.

If you study accounts from classical antiquity, you would realise there were numerous primitive tribes living right next to those that were more advanced. Your argument has been fully debunked here.

 

[Cassiterides]

So if the fossil record did not predate writing how did it come about? How and when did the
Precambrian
Cambrian
Ordovician
Silurian
Devonian
Mississippian
Pennsylvanian
Permian
Triassic

I'm not a geologist, but i already provided the evidence for the flood from the Bible, other historical accounts and from flood-myths.

 

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Originally Posted by Cassiterides

Yes precisely, civilization only appeared a few thousand years back. One of the videos covered this. Archeology therefore supports the idea of a recent history of man, that's why a lot of archeologists are Young Earth Creationists.

The question to evolutionists is, why did civilization only appear a few thousand years back when they believe man is hundreds of thousands or millions of years old?
​

Increased brain size, greater need for social cohesion, the beginning of technology and agriculture which generated the need for better social organisation.

The climate during the Pleistocene was very unstable and probably made development of agriculture impossible. The holocene climate as been much more stable at least since the end of the Younger Dryas
Younger Dryas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
about 11,500 years ago.

This made the development of agriculture feasible. Agriculture societies do not require that everyone spend all their time gathering food. Systems of recording transactions are also important in agricultural societies where one person can raise more food than his family can consume so some sort of writen record keeping becomes important. See for example

Climate stability and the development of agricultural societies, Joan Feynman and Alexander Ruzmaikin (2007) Climate Change 84: 295-311
Abstract Although Modern Man had developed long before the migration from Africa began ∼ 55,000 years ago no agricultural societies developed until about ∼ 10,000 years ago. In the next 5,000 years agricultures developed independently in at least six regions of the world. It is virtually certain that it was not a chance occurrence that so many new agricultures appeared in the same 5,000 years. What inhibited agriculture world wide for 44,000 years and what changed ∼ 10,000 years ago? Here we suggest that a major factor influencing the development of agricultural societies was climate stability. From the experience of four cultures we estimate that the development of agriculture needed ∼ 2,000 years of climate free from significant climate variations on time scales of a few centuries. Using the Empirical Mode Decomposition technique specifically designed to exhibit the time history of the amplitude of variations in non-stationary time series such as climate proxy records, we find that between 50,000 years ago and the termination of the Younger Dryas ∼ 11,600 years ago there was probably no time span as long as 2,000 years that was free of relatively large century scale variations. Furthermore variations on these time scales appear to have been relatively small since the Younger Dryas (YD) ended, supporting our proposition concerning the importance of climate stability in the history of human culture.

 

[driewerf]

The ancient Sumerians, Egyptians and Chinese all have flood myths. This is something so well known they can even be found on wikipedia.

And in what languages wrote those Chinese, Sumerians and Egyptians, before your hypothetical flood?

 

[lucaspa]

Most dinosaurs became extinct since they were hunted by man, hence why we have legends such as St. George and the Dragon, Beowulf etc. Check the links below:

Dinosaurs from Anglo-Saxon and other Records

Zoologically applied terms in the Beowulf Epic

Those legends 1) don't describe dinos and 2) are not enough hunting to account for hunting them to extinction.

We have the mammoths and cave bears which were hunted to extinction. We have the cracked bones (to get at the marrow), bones with cut marks as the carcasses were cut up to get the meat, charred bones from the roasting, etc. Just where are all the dino bones like that? We've searched enough and collected enough dino bones in Europe that we should have seen such evidence if it had happened like you say.

 

[lucaspa]

I'm not a geologist, but i already provided the evidence for the flood from the Bible, other historical accounts and from flood-myths.

Those are insufficient for a world-wide flood. First, a world-wide flood would have left physical evidence. Instead, we find evidence that contradicts a world-wide flood. Which is why scientists -- all of whom were Christian and many of whom were ministers -- concluded there had been no world-wide flood by 1831. The first quote in my signature was partly in response to that knowledge.

The flood-myths don't work because:
1. Such myths can arise from local floods and
2. Only a small minority of cultures have flood myths. Of those that do, many (such as the Biblical account) are copied from earlier accounts and therefore are not independent.

 

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

I just gave you classical documentation of primitive cultures co-existing at the same time as the ancient egyptians.

At the same time, just as primative cultures exist in remote places today but not in the land of dynastic Egypt.

If you study accounts from classical antiquity, you would realise there were numerous primitive tribes living right next to those that were more advanced. Your argument has been fully debunked here.

Right next to? That is certainly not what you references indicated.

the Lixites told Hanno that beyond the mountains was the land of strange kind of people,

Which comes from Here
Cave Dwellers (Troglodytes)

Both authors seem to refer to cave-like abris in the desert, which have been identified by archaeologists. The people living over there may have been nomads who stayed in these caves temporarily, because they could find some water in the shade, and might even procure some food. There must have been some plants and an occasional tree, especially in the shade. Bees have also been attested: their nests can still be seen.

Many of the cultures I referred to flourished right along the Nile Valley and some of them such as the Maadi and Naqada were very widespread through the region. Can you seriously expect anyone to believe that they existed side by side with the more advanced Egyptian dynastic culture and were not immediately absorbed by it? It is your total nonsense claim that has been thoroughly debunked.

 

[driewerf]

Increased brain size, greater need for social cohesion, the beginning of technology and agriculture which generated the need for better social organisation.

Not to forget the end of the Ice Age that made agriculture possible.

 

[lucaspa]

Yes precisely, civilization only appeared a few thousand years back. One of the videos covered this. Archeology therefore supports the idea of a recent history of man, that's why a lot of archeologists are Young Earth Creationists.

ROFL! Name an archeologist that is a YEC! Archeologists talk about a history of humans far longer than 6,000 years. Remember those 30,000 year old cave paintings in France?

Or the 50,000+ year pieces of jewelry? ART

Another creationist on another thread posted a link to a scientific article looking at 400,000 year old spears!

The question to evolutionists is, why did civilization only appear a few thousand years back when they believe man is hundreds of thousands or millions of years old?

H. sapiens is about 100,000 years old max. The reasons are many:
1. Accumulation of technology necessary for a "civilization". That includes metallurgy to have tools to work stone, agriculture, engineering to make large buildings, etc.
2. Part of that technology includes agriculture so that enough people can be fed on a regular basis to have a "civilization".
3. Extra resources so that people can be exempted from the necessary tasks of hunting, gathering, farming to the roles of administrator, engineer, blacksmith, tanner, carpenter, etc.

 

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Originally Posted by Frumious Bandersnatch

So if the fossil record did not predate writing how did it come about? How and when did the
Precambrian
Cambrian
Ordovician
Silurian
Devonian
Mississippian
Pennsylvanian
Permian
Triassic
​

Layers with their unique groups of fossils get laid down in your model of earth history? Were some laid down between creation and the flood? If so which? Were some laid down by the flood? If so which? Are some post-flood? If so which? Inquiring minds want to know. Standard geology has answers to these questions, starting of course with a 4.55 billion year old planet and no global flood. What is your answer? Can you come up with one that actually makes sense? I have been debating YECs for more than 20 years and haven't yet seen one that is not easily shown to be false. Perhaps you can do better.

I'm not a geologist, but i already provided the evidence for the flood from the Bible, other historical accounts and from flood-myths.

You have provided nothing but myths. You can't answer this question because there is no answer that fits with YEC. You have provided what you think is evidence but that evidence can easily be explained without reference to a young earth or global flood and in fact the diversity of flood myths is evidence against a single event as their source.

The geological layers I reference and their fossil contents do more than provide evidence for the standard model of geology and paleontology they are among the many things that completely falsify the young earth and global flood as scientific hypotheses.

 

[Cassiterides]

And in what languages wrote those Chinese, Sumerians and Egyptians, before your hypothetical flood?

Before the Tower of Babel, everyone wrote and spoke the same language.

Genesis 11: 1

''And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech''

Different languages, cultures etc are a product of the scattering from Babel.

 

[Cassiterides]

probably made development of agriculture impossible. The holocene climate as been much more stable at least since the end of the Younger Dryas
Younger Dryas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
about 11,500 years ago.

What evidence do you have 11,500 years ago existed? So you have a time machine? You are just giving me speculative dates.

 

[Cassiterides]

Those legends 1) don't describe dinos and 2) are not enough hunting to account for hunting them to extinction.

Firstly, dragons don't just appear in 'legends', but actual chronicles and historical writings. Secondly, it's obvious this is a area you know nothing on, so all you are giving me is more of your ignorance.

You might be a biologist, but i highly doubt you have a history degree or any education in history.

 

[gipsy]

What evidence do you have 11,500 years ago existed? So you have a time machine? You are just giving me speculative dates.

What evidence do you have 11,500 microseconds ago existed? So you have a time machine? You are just giving me speculative dates.