Saturday, May 8, 2010

Creationism

Not that long ago I was viewing a religion forum to gather information for another post topic (Religion and technology) when I came across an interesting thread. Among the debates about Protestantism vs. Catholicism, the rather interesting thread where Quakers answered questions about their church, and the occasional "Help, I used to be pagan, what do I do now?" posts, there was a tiny little gem stirring up so much controversy that ANOTHER thread had to be created to continue the conversation.


Well, two. The first : The earth is only 6,000 years old. The second : The Big Bang is a myth based on fallacies. We are going to be dealing with the first today; the second is just as big of a train wreck though (perhaps bigger).



It started out simple enough - a poster was wondering how this could be taught when there is clear scientific proof that it is untrue.


The first reply : While I certainly would not say that the earth is that young, science can only study appearances in the physical world


This is..not at all true. I wonder if this person has ever had a science class in their life. This comment alone should have revealed what I was about to start reading and the amount of hair I was going to pull out of my skull in anguish as I read reply after reply of ignorant disdain for scientific fact and processes. 


Other Gems (on the first page alone) include:
I also think good science points to a 'young earth'. 


My young man, pray tell what is "good science" ?


 the rock layers were not formed one layer on top of the preceding layer as commonly supposed but sideways and all life appeared suddenly and at the same time caused by the biologists' big bang known as the cambrian explosion.Most dating methods prove a young earth and those that say otherwise are fla\wed,it seems by millions or billions of year


it would be the magnetic decay of the earth. Since it's been measurable (which means we've had the technology to do so), it has been decaying, and appears to have a half life of about 1400 years. Extrapolate backwards at that rate, and earth could be no more than 20,000 years or it would be molten. 


I like how carbon dating is proven to be unreliable throughout the thread, yet they are willing to accept this meager theory of magnetic decay. By the way, way off. 


Of course, there are others fighting back, which gives me hope, but they are quickly overrun and dismissed because their "science" is not reliable enough. Of course, there is some fighting about evolution on the side, and many of the links (to creationist websites) are pure conjecture and prove nothing. There are a minority that point out bible passages and theories which state that God experiences time differently than us, which is a fascinating and highly plausible theory. Then someone posts a cave painting that was made some 10,00 years ago. This is brushed off as unreliable. 


Obviously, there are people like myself who are skeptical of some scientific claims. The scientific-political believers will continue to insist it's only science but it's obvious it is not. 


Its okay to be skeptical of scientific claims - most scientists are. That is the reason tests and studied are repeated numerous times by different scientists, the study reports go through a peer evaluation system before they can get published - and if someone spots some inconsistency or whatnot then they can send it back and it won't get published - but science is about discovering the truth. It takes a while to get to the truth, and there are many revisions as we learn new things. SO to say something isn't science when it clearly is makes me believe this person has no grasp on the concept of science.  


[in response to several articles posted about redshift and the age of the universe] Wrong. There is another posibility: you choose to interpret what you see such that if it's not that way, I'll blame God a being. deceiving 


How can redshift be wrong? Its been scientifically proven time and time again. It's a spin-off of the Doppler effect, so I suppose that is wrong too. And why, exactly, would God be deceiving? 


Most of present day science came about by God fearing God believing people. Enter Darwin, and science has changed. Atheists will note how many 'scientists' are now agnostic or atheists. Remember, a little leaven leavens the whole lump. 


Despite the fact that Darwin was not an atheist at all...He was christian.In fact, I am of the firm belief that studying science actually brings you closer to God. Maybe this person was referencing evolution? Which, actually, is totally wrong. Darwin came up with decent with modification, which is the mechanism through which species have evolved.  


The end result is this : you can have an opinion, but some opinions are wrong. This is the case here. There is absolutely no way that Earth is only 6,000 years old - these people are sadly misguided and living in ignorance (in my belief). I don't understand it. At all. 

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