Arf

One part of me thinks that's the stupidest idea ever. The other part of me thinks it's so stupid but such a cool idea. Think about all the crazy physics that would be behind something like that and Aquasphere Pirates. That man lives in a very cool universe.

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CingularDuality

Oh, that's awesome!

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CingularDuality

FYI, someone finally got video of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in Hamburg, Germany!

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Beatnik

Hahahahaha AWESOME. That's worthy of a thread of it's own.

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Kerostasis

Woah...long thread. I've only made it to the end of page 4 so far, and there's soo many things I want to comment on! But I guess they're probably all lost to the mists of time and necro-threads by now...

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Rick_the_new_guy

This thread has been resurrected due to post number 432 of this thread: http://www.tacticalgamer.com/picture...tml#post616949

Ken Miller.

This was a great view.

I’ll tell you my story

I am mostly an emperialist who likes evidence to support ideas and theory.

I feel the theory of evolution, like all scientific theories, has merit and could very well be actual reality.

I imagine that a creator of sorts created the matrix we live in.
I pretty much leave things at that.

My favorite minute game at around 80.

Here, a question was asked about the Middle East and stuff, and Miller said something very very important IMO.

He said something like, at one point the middle east was the center of the most modern and cutting edge science, but some were along the line the peoples rejected it.
And then he said, the same thing going on today (team I.D.) has the potential to do that. Meaning, science (evolution) bad and evil, religion (Christianity) good, therefore the civilization rejects science.
I really thought that was a very important statement.

Another thing was how a lot of registered republicans reject team I.D.
Furthermore, the conservative Judge (who is smart, lol) rejected team I.D. also.

One thing they danced around was the reasons behind the I.D. serge of the later 1980s and today.

There are two possibilities.

1. Team I.D. is earnest and his trying to enlighten us.


2. Damage Control

The past few hundred years have not been that good for Religion with regards to its version of reality. Science is conflicting with it something terrible.

Such examples include:

1. Earth revolving around the sun.

2. Ordain Kings and Queens slain by mere peasants without godly punishment stricken down during the crime.

3. Explanation of microbes with regards to spontaneous generation and plagues.
(meaning, once people thought plagues were suddenly created by a higher being, not some punk ass bacterium cell or virus that came from a live organic cell, not thin air.)

4. Sudden serge in paleontology and fossil finds.

5. Origin of Species, written by Darwin.

6. D.N.A., the molecule of what all our genes are made from is found.

7. Carbon dating and the Earth being well over tens of millions of years old.

8. The humane genome mapping and understanding of primate relations.

All of these and more, may have religion on the defense.

Know, they could be on the defense for two reasons.

1. A cynical view would be they have a racket to keep up and feel threaten by team science muscling in on their turf on telling people how things are.

2. They feel that souls are being lost and, seeing how the objective for all religious people is to help others become “saved”, they are busting out I.D. to do everyone a favor. Sure this involves lying and broadening the scope of scientific theory so that the super natural is now involved, but it is for the greater good.


Now I know what the S. Monster is. Of course.

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sordavie

You're an empiricist not an imperialist. hehe. An empiricist is someone who thinks that all knowledge comes from sensory experience. An imperialist is one who advocates colonizing foreign countries.

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Kerostasis

I kinda like Intelligent Design myself. But I'm not interested in getting into that debate 3 days before Christmas, so let me just respond to a particular one of your points that I think a lot of people have misconceptions about:

I'm sure most of you have at least heard of the invention of the concept of "ZERO" by the arabs sometime around the 9th or 10th century AD. I don't actually remember the century any more, but whats important is to note that it was not around during the writing of the old testament.

So why does that matter? With zeros, you can make a number as big as you like just by adding more zeros onto it. Without zeros, you have a certain number of words that represent numbers up to a certain size, and then you just...run out. Anything bigger than that is simply "big". You can't even write it down. You have no way to express numbers that you haven't invented words for yet.

Specifically, the hebrew number system only went up to a couple of hundred. So how does an ancient hebrew describe the age of the earth, if it is billions of years old? He can't. Even if someone told him exactly how old the earth was, he couldn't even comprehend numbers that large. He doesn't have words for them.

My point in all this is that you can't really expect the Hebrews to be able to accurately describe the age of the earth, and so determining the age of the earth as older than 10,000 years really isn't much of a hit to religion. Thats just a limitation of their language.

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sordavie

The concept of zero is much older than the date you place it's "invention" at. Indeed, Aristotle in the 3rd century BC recognized zero as a number. And, he wasn't the first to have such a concept. So, it's likely that there were people around with the concept of zero at the time the old testament was written. Moreover, the point about numerals that express arbitrarily large numbers doesn't quite seem to be a point about the concept of the number zero as it is a point about a mathematical language in which you have placeholders.

Anyhow, I'm unsure how whether the writers of the old testament had such a concept exactly how this fits in with a discussion on intelligent design. Even if they had no numeral for 'zero', it doesn't mean they didn't have the concept of magnitudes, and different orders of magnitudes, larger than they had words to express. I think it would be a stretch to say that if there's no word in your language that corresponds to a concept, then you don't have that concept. That's a substantial thesis and would need defending. I think that intuitively it must be wrong. Hence, your argument that Hebrews can't comprehend lengths of time larger than a couple hundred years isn't persuasive. Here's some evidence:

1. We can learn new words.

It's plausible to think that we learn new words by associating a string of symbols or sounds (afterall, that's what a word is) to a certain concept we have in our mind. If that's so, then we must have the concept in mind before we learn how to use a new word.

2. We can introduce new words to a language.

The idea is similar to 1, but it doesn't require a particular theory about learning. It's plausible to think that we introduce new words to a language, say a technical language like mathematics, or the words that physicists use like 'electron' or 'neutrino', by having a concept in mind and introducing a convention to associate that concept with a string of symbols or sounds.

3. We have concepts for which there are no English words that correspond.

Suppose my number system went only up to 999. That is, suppose that I have no words to express numbers larger than 999. It's possible, still, that I have the concept of a period of time longer than 999 years. This can be done in a number of ways.

-First, I could associate 999 with a unit other than years, say centuries or millenia (or, I guess millenia minus one). This would get me the concept of a period of time longer than 999 years, for example '900 centuries', without any numerals that express numbers greater than 999. (That would be 90,000 years )

-Second, I may have a concept about combining periods of time in order to understand a period of time greater than that which I have numerals for. I take it this is what happens in Genesis. This is how Genesis describes the earth as being more than 4000 years old without having any numerals that express numbers greater than 999. Here's how that would go. I can express a period between event a and event b, which lasts 900 years. I can then specify another period between event b and even c, which lasts another 900 years. If I have the concept about combination, I have the concept of the amount of time that has passed between event a and event c without any numeral in my language that expresses that number in years. (1,800 years in this example)

Well, whatever the case is with concepts and language, I still think this "misconception" about zero isn't really relevant to the topic of intelligent design.

Intelligent design is not the doctrine of creationism. Intelligent design is supposed to be a science on a par, and in competition with, evolution. So, it's quite unlikely that the person or people who wrote the old testament had in mind intelligent design. But, perhaps that's not your point.

Your point is that it's not a hit on a religion if science tells us that the world is more than 5000 years old and the author or authors of the religion's texts didn't have words that expressed numbers larger than a couple hundred. I think this is wrong. If your religious view is that the Earth is 5000 years old and science tells us that the Earth is much older, then that is a hit to your religious views. You can't rationally hold that both are true, so you're going to have pick one or neither to believe. That's a hit to your belief system, especially if you regard science in general as being a pretty good method of gaining knowledge about the way the world is.

Now, it would be another thing to say that we shouldn't take what the authors wrote literally--that they were just speaking figuratively when talking about the age of the Earth. This is certainly one line to take, but I think Rick was talking about those who take the literal route: that the religious text is literally true and it literally says that the Earth is much less old than science says it is.

PS. When talking about a peice of language, a word or phrase, that expresses a number, call it a numeral. The squiggly line that sort of looks like a snake in single quote, '2', is not a number. It's a numeral. The number 2 is not a word. It's a number, and numbers are not words. It just makes things much clearer and easier to understand if the distinction is made. Certainly, once you see the distinction, you should see that one can have a concept of a number greater than one expressible by any numeral in his or her language.

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Rick_the_new_guy

good save on the crucial difference between i and e, thanks.

Another thing I should have written on why they are perhaps defensive is that, people like to hear what they want to hear.

This works for everyone.

This would explain why Fox News has done so well. There was a huge market for persons who wanted to hear things more to the right, and are convenced that CNN is biased and to the left. Murdoch capitalized on it.
For those who watch Fox News, they feel they are watcing reality and good stuff. I believe, it is because they are hearing what they want to hear.

Those who are fairly liberal, in turn do not watch the station, instead they watch the Daily Show, lol, jk. Thus hearing what they want to hear.

Same way with parents and loved one who have friends and family who are casulties of Operation Freedom. Be pretty hard to espect a lot of them to say their loved one died for nothing. They are most likely going to say that it mattered as opposed to it not.

Same with religion, sort of suck to say, "yeah, guess my whole believe system is garbage, I need to work on that, and here I go."


The question still remains, who are the big wigs pulling the strings on geting I.D. in vogue? Could it be a few Sith Lords or complete grass roots movement/s?

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Obi

None of those (maybe with the exeption of number 5) would put "religion on the defense". I'm not sure I follow how DNA, for example, goes against religion.

Well, if God does exist then couldn't he give something the appearance of age? If He wanted He could make a huge oak tree apear in your garden. When you go outside and use Tree-Ring dated it would appear that the tree is 100 years old despite the fact that you saw it appear two minutes ago.

I'm just guessing here but doesn't the earth need to be really old for everything to "work"?

Bah, I suck with words.

What I'm trying to say is, in order for life to continue properly is it a requirment that it has a really old appearance? Do certain aspects of life rely on the planet being old? If the answer is "yes" then wouldn't it make sense to create a world that appears very old?

Now this is just a theory, I don't know all the answers.

Rick_the_new_guy

D.N.A. and gene mapping is the atcual mechanism that gives natural selection and evolution substance and weight.
Miller talked about this with humans and apes and the chromosome case study.

When those two dudes in the 1940s, mapped the double helix, it was just one more step in having tangable evidence of how organic life is created and such. Note, a women helped out also, but got very little credit.

maybe I am missing something here...

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sordavie

Isn't this a defense of religion from science already? Science says that the Earth is x years old. You, the religious guy, comes to the defense of the religion saying that science is wrong because God only made the Earth appear to us to be x years old when in actuality, it is y years old. That sounds like religious belief is under attack and here's a reply. When people say that religion is under attack by science, all they mean is that science tells us something incompatible with something the religion tells us.

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Steeler

What proof do I have that the world around me isn't some elaborate charade constructed by God within my own lifespan? How do I know this forum, and everyone in it are not actors written by God for my benefit, and their opinions and statements are merely illusions of independent human minds? How do I know the universe didn't spring into existence just before I woke up this morning, with all my memories placed by God to give the illusion of having gone out drinking with the office the night before? (That would explain the headache, certainly.)

This is why empiracists begin with 'Cogito ergo sum' and go from there.

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TheFeniX

Are you asking if God could/would have created a world 10,000 years ago, the appears to be billions of years old? I'm sure he could. But why? The bible never mentions anything about this.

From a realistic standpoint: the writers of the bible had no idea how old the world was and no way to even make an educated guess. The world was a lot simpler and could be explained away more easily. As technology and science progress, it's that much harder.

People tend to go with numbers that seem realistic to them, that are "tangible." This is off on a tangent, but there was a huge spat in the Star Wars EU about a retcon done in which there were only billions of battle droids at the disposal of the Trade Federation and it's allies instead of the assumed trillions and quitillions (probably spelled that wrong). It seems completely off-topic, but it shows that people have a hard time believing numbers that large even in this day and age, but that's what you'd need on that large of a galactic scale. With billions of battle droids, you'd end up with maybe 10 droids per member world of the Old Republic (not much of an occuping force). But people don't like huge numbers they can't "grab." It's hard to explain, but I hope I've done a decent enough job.

So, thousands is more believable than millions/billions in that time frame.

From a religious standpoint: it really doesn't make a lot of sense. Why does God go through such a charade when not 10,000 years-ago he led a very active and "documented" role in the life of the earth? He explained everything a few thousand years ago, but now can't be bothered to explain why he left Quasars out in space billions upon billions of light-years away that the human race has no chance of ever realistically exploring. It's an extreme example, granted.

You could argue that God gave people at the time the knowledge he thought they would be able to comprehend. Humans would have to be absolutely primitive God. While that seems obvious, look just now how far advanced we are even now.

A human from that timeframe would look at our cities and most likely think of US as Gods. And we can't match God for squat. So, it would be reasonable to assume God just dumbed things down for the humans at the time. So, when is he going to make with the plans for a Death Star. I'm ready to blow some planets up!

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