Quote:
Originally Posted by Trimac20
Most are Biblical literalists, though, so try to fit in science with the Bible.
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And this is where they shoot themselves in the foot.
When I read what some folk post here I really have to wonder if these are folk with a gr5 only education.
I do not mean this to insulting.
Surely one should realise, hey folk from all over the world believe evolution is factual and barring a few exceptions, it seems to only be Americans that holds to this so tightly.
When we look at the evidence of the natural world exempt from evolution, we see a plethora of evidence for a very very old earth. That should be your first clue. The bible clearly has dates of creation and other stuff by the mere fact there a genealogies mentioned, you know the begats, add up the years etc and you get an approximate time this was supposed to happen. After all the traditional BC and AD dating ran for a long while before it changed to a religious neutral BCE and CE (before current era and current era)
Now if the earth is older as various scientific proofs present, you must ask is there a global conspiracy or is this plausible. If you think all the scientists are in on some mass deception, ask yourself why would they need to lie? Just to disprove the bible? That is not what is driving science. Science is the tool whereby we seek real answers that the bible fails to mention and whatever the discipline is, the methods to arrive at conclusions are all pretty much the same, it must be falsifiable. That does not mean open to interpretation.
If you can accept that there is no global conspiracy, then we must examine certain biblical claims like the flood. There are many proofs I have posted numerous times and no one yet has refuted it in any way other than a simple dismissal. A global food was impossible as none of the proofs bear witness to such an event. Bear in mind, according to scripture, this was only ~4500 years ago.
What are these proofs?
- Antarctic Ice cores dating between 400k and 750k (no flood as there would only be 4500 years of data)
- Very old trees older than 4500 years (tree rings, one for each year) Even evergreens make one ring a year
- Lake Varves (sediment layers spanning thousands if not millions of years - no evidence of a flood.
- River deltas (None of these deltas would have formed to their current size in a mere 4500 years) The geology of these have no traces of any global flood
- Impact craters all over the world
How would 4 different pieces of evidence be tampered with. The evidence is irrefutable. There are plenty more like canyons, cave formations and the like and ALL of these extend way past biblical time lines.
So was the flood just local?
The flood is the key issue and remember the lineage of Jesus traces all the way back to Adam (allegedly)
Now look at the biological diversity in both the plant and animal kingdoms. For all this to have been replenished in 4500 years, we are talking evolution on a scale not even scientists claim.
The scientific evidence just is not there.
Now there has to be another answer. This is where evolution steps in. Not going to go there right now.
What we find with sites like AiG and the creation institute, they introduce any evidence that may support a YEC world view. They feebly attempt to misguide people by actually misquoting and quote mining scientific journals as in reality, they have no evidence outside of blind belief in the bible.
Before DNA was discovered, the key was a "missing link" or a transitional fossil as this palaeontology stuff was digging up and dating fossils that built on the Darwinian theory of evolution. Dinos came back to skeletal life and yet these YEC folk suggest humans co existed.
All this stuff we have discovered in the last 150-200 years of enlightenment raises many questions the bible has absolutely no answer for.
Now folk say we do not know what initiated all this but we have some pretty good ideas and none of them seem to need a Jewish god. We probably will never know but that is far more honest than assuming some god did it.
The other areas of cosmology show us the cosmos is far older than 6000 years. We have dated rocks and found 4.5Bn years age for the earth and an estimate or 13.5Bn for the cosmos
Now if this time frame is accepted as more plausible, you can get into the nitty gritties of evolution.
Back to DNA. Wow was that a let down from the YEC folk. DNA/RNA mapping shows common ancestry for all living things but we do not have a complete assemble puzzle yet. We do know what we have and predict what we need to find and thus we keep adding pieces to this incomplete puzzle.
What did the creationists do?
They simply stated this DNA is too complex and this is an indicator of intelligent design and he was guiding evolution all along. Really there is no god particle in any of this and only folk who are floored by complexity want to assign god to the bits of the puzzle we do not yet know. That is about as far as my evolutionary knowledge goes, I am no expert but I do know a hell of a lot more than pseudo doctor Kent Hovind and the cronies that work for him.
Is this enough reason to become agnostic?
Probably not. Many have managed to accept what science is presenting and still maintain belief.
If religion was not so dogmatic, it probably would have morphed into something more akin to science. Theistic evolution it is not but it is at least a start.
Now back to the bible.
If the flood never happened, then Noah is likely a myth, an so too is Adam and Eve.
We find that there a re host of other creation myths that this A&E story was borrowed from. This comes from assimilation between different cultures when their stories were exchanged and merged.
W/o Adam, the whole basis for redemption now is rendered moot.
So did Jesus exist?
Now you keep digging down the rabbit hole and eventually you discover that much of his legend is also made up and a conglomeration of earlier myths. He becomes just one more man made god.
Make no mistake, the Roman empire extended widely and the influence of the new state religion was simply worked politically with the Royalty of the day and as such this religion spread by decree of the king. Many religions were absorbed, festivals merged and you have what you have today christianity, most of which follow Pauline doctrines rather than the Jesus stuff.
I predict that in the next 100 years the Vatican will be simple a tourist attraction of a mindset passed just as we look at ancient monuments like Stonehenge.
One need only look at how the church refused to accept the heliocentric solar model from Galileo and that only in 1992 did the church apologise. He was right.
As time marches on, we just keep finding more and more leaving mankind to either accept this as more reliable than the bible or not.
In this age of technology, you can no longer hide the truth from the next generation. Without non questioning people, the church knows it's days are numbered.
Yuzzah I say.
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