That’s actually worse than most of the attempts made here by cranks who don’t believe in relativity. Or math.
If you don’t want to read through that - and I don’t blame you - they don’t even try to refute any of the science. At the end they simply say that God did it by supernatural means so they don’t have to answer the question. They actually admit that there is no science in their “explanations!”
It’s also interesting how specific the “refutation” is. They try to dispose of factors like the constant speed of light or the universal nature of time, but only to make the problem of the age of the universe go away. Ignored entirely is the fact that these are factors measurable in local experiments that give exactly the same results predicted mathematically as the distant results. GPS systems rely on relativistic effects and the constant speed of light and precise time. If these were all varying, as they claim, GPS wouldn’t work. But this can’t be mentioned.
They are forced to say that God set up the universe using one set of rules but now has shifted to a different set, just because.
Beware of people who just say no without offering a coherent theory of their own that can be examined. They are an embarrassment to thought.
I just give what the teachers used to teach. You can debate this in Great Debates where I will not have to read theological debates which I couldn’t care less about.
Which reminds me of a Rabbi I once corresponded with, and who was knowledgable enough about science to understand that the rainbow is white light split into component parts.
When I quizzed him about the biblical story in Genesis that says God created the rainbow at that time to remind mankind of the flood and his promise to never do it again, I asked what happened to the light coming from very distant stars, which started its journey way before The Flood. Did it change from non-spectrum to full-spectrum somewhere during its trip, about the time that Noah disembarked from the ark?
He said yes, that was the only reasonable explanation.
Anyone who can believe that can believe anything, and is immune to real science.
I’m surprised that’s best answer he could give. If you want to get technical about what Genesis says, it didn’t rain before the flood - you had mist and rivers/streams for irrigation. Rainbows and rain are both caused by water droplets in the air so it is at least internally consistent that you had no rainbows until you started having rain.
That’s the thing that bothers me most about so many YECs. They often don’t seem to pay that much attention to what’s actually in the Bible either.
Another example is that the second chapter of Genesis doesn’t have to be read as contiguous with the first. The most literal reading suggests that Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden were a special second creation after the first.
There’s another potential gap in chronology between Genesis 1:2 and 1:3 - the heavens and earth have been created before God begins the six-day process.
These observations don’t instantly reconcile science with Genesis, but they do at least permit a more interesting discussion.
You don’t need rain for rainbows, just mist or a refracting device. And, like the “if a tree falls in the forest…” question, if there was no prism back then, did light not have a spectrum?
That “no rain” interpretation might give the devout Rabbi an out, but he chose to believe the much less likely postulate that all light, everywhere in the universe, no matter where it was, where it began or was headed, would simultaneously alter its basic atomic structure because of a magical pronouncement on one insignificant planet in an insignificant galaxy at one obscure corner of the universe.
The idea of a “trickster God” has really scary implications if you believe in God in the first place, I really have no idea why they’re going for it. Can you imagine the possible split second after your death ? A bright light, a booming, disembodied James Earl Jones-ish voice going “Eternal life at My side ? You believed that shit ? HAAHAHAHAHA ! SUCKER ! Man, that one is never getting old !”
The fall back is God put it that way. The question then is “Why would go to all that trouble?” The answer is “Why not, look at all the different kinds of animals.”
God is testing your faith. If it was easy to believe in him, you would get no brownie points for it.
A good friend of mine–also an atheist–points out that before Darwin, there were reasons to believe in God because there was no plausible explanation for life on earth. There is still no convincing explanation for how it got started, but several reasonable conjectures and I expect that in the not-too-distant future one of them will start to look good. But once it got started, even if it was just self-catalyzing RNA, then evolution and time is all you need for the rest.
One cannot, of course, refute the notion that the earth, the universe and all of us were created 30 seconds ago with all the fossils in place and all our memories just as they are. Not only that, but the current state, being of higher entropy is rather more likely than the state at the time of the big bang. That fact, rather than the origin of life, is the weakest point in the whole scientific enterprise. How did such a state of zero (or near-zero) entropy ever happen?
Creationism is a supernatural conspiracy theory. Its defenders are out to win a culture war. They dont work in good faith, dont do science, and scoff at your evidence.
>A good friend of mine–also an atheist–points out that before Darwin, there were reasons to believe in God because there was no plausible explanation for life on earth.
First off, evolution has nothing to say about the origins of life. Just how evolution works. Secondly your friend is wrong because in the absence of information there’s no sane reason to believe fantastical things, and even if you disagree with that there’s no reason to subscribe to monotheism over say Theravada Buddhism or plain-jane solipsism. Not to mention a deist or buddhist might have a religious worldview for origin but not a religious explanation for evolution, everyday physics, etc. A lot of religious people have no problem with this kind of view. So you dont need to be a materialist atheist to subscribe to evolution. Previous to evolution there was quite a bit of religious disbelief, starting with the ancient greeks.
People believe in god because its a psychologically pleasing belief, not because they had no alternatives until recently.
Not that this in any way gives credit to anything they say, but the issue of whether or not the speed of light has always been constant is a matter of some debate among astronomers. IIRC, the way certain information was transmitted across large distances early in the universe’s lifespan are hard to explain using our current value of c.
But the Big Bang is a creationist theory. It may not be consistent with a literal reading of Genesis, but to insist that all the Bible be understood literally is a modern American heresy anyway, with little precedent in Christian tradition. It has, however, always been important to Christians that the universe should have been created at some particular point in the past, and that there should be no naturalistic explanation for this creation, leaving the door permanently open to the inference that God did it. It is no accident that the Big Bang theory was first proposed by a priest, Georges Lemaître.
Back in the day, I used to root for the old Steady State theory against the Big Bang, because the Big Bang seemed so obviously tied up with religion. Indeed, I understand that Fred Hoyle was inspired to develop Steady State theory for just that reason. Unfortunately, it did not pan out. Nevertheless, some of these new theories that suggest, for instance, that the Big Bang is just a consequence of colliding “branes” (whatever they are) in some higher dimensional universe may be an attempt to revive a sort of Steady State (i.e., eternally existing, uncreated universe) at a higher dimensional level. It is a pity that theories of this type seem to be so profoundly incomprehensible to anyone but total mathheads, and that they seem (so I hear) to be totally disconnected from any actual or conceivable empirical evidence.
Mind you, the basic Big Bang theory seems to have gone the same way too, with its reliance on fudge factors like “dark energy” and “inflation.” (Maybe the mathheads on the board will be able to explain to me why all this stuff is perfectly kosher, or why “brane” theory, or some equivalent, is not just some grandiose science fictional fantasy with equations, but I won’t be holding my breath.)
I think I understand what you mean, but to be clear: not being able to explain everything is not a weakness of the scientific enterprise. Indeed, in many ways it’s a strength; being aware of what we do and do not know.
From a philosophical point of view, an eternal, steady-state universe explains no more and no less than saying the Universe has existed for a finite time.
Because, even when talking of a steady-state Universe, we can still ask “How is it possible for anything to exist?” and “Why this reality/universe/multiverse and not some other?”.
Someone so inclined can still squeeze a god into this gap, although of course it really does nothing to address these philosophical questions (you can ask “How is it possible for god to exist?”, “Why does god have the properties he has?” etc).
Something existing forever does not explain its own existence because I can conceive of eternal entities that clearly do not exist.
I’m no expert, but I would say that considering things like dark energy and inflation “fudges” is what the Creationists would like us to do.
The reality, certainly in the case of inflation, is that the big bang theory explains many phenomena that we see very, very well. But the inflation hypothesis could help us make even more accurate predictions and fit even more observations into our model.
AFAIK inflation has not been established beyond doubt (e.g. by making precise predictions) but if/when it is, we’ll have learned more about our Universe.
Your hardcore Creationist who believes in the inerrant Word as laid out in the KJV would hardly be surprised to hear a Catholic priest express scientific ideas. Why, he is an agent of The Scarlet Woman–the very Hoor of Babylon!
Nitpick: I don’t believe theistic evolution does not posit an interventionist God. While evolution may occur under some set rules, it isn’t necessarily predetermined.
Right. Darwin’s book is titled The Origin of Species, not The Origin of Life.
Creationists love to forget that inconvenient fact.
However, it’s true that while Darwin was part of a longer tradition of scientists, just one with a much better explanation, it was his work that caused the biggest sensation. Once you posit natural selection as an explanation so much falls into place that supernatural intervention for each species becomes completely specious. That’s why Darwin’s work is the starting point for all modern theory.
I think you do Lemaître a disservice here. He was a scientist, not a creationist and he kept his science separate from his religion. From here:
Inflation and dark energy are testable theories, while branes are just an untestable hypothesis at this point. The Planck telescope, for instance, will be looking for evidence to support inflation.