Religion

[Benny]

Well well, seeing as you all shyed away...

I'll start by saying, that you are all welcome to believe in who/whatever you like with regard to religion, each to their own., it doesn't change my opinion about anyone here, but...

Can anyone present me a good argument as to why I should believe in a god? Evolution is so strongly supported scientifically, genetic research shows a huge link down the age to African Eve, the river of DNA flows on.

Surely no-one is this day and age believes in Adam and Eve, do they?

[Dr Sadako]

I am afraid that the creationist are growing strong and powerful. In the USA they have managed to control elementary schools and universities to an extent that you wouldn't believe. You should read the following book that actually discusses this growing problem in a controlled and mature manner:

Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism (A Bradford Book)  
by Robert T. Pennock
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0...5594953-8261213

[Norm]

This has been the cause of many a heated debate in the Norm house hold.My wife is a science teacher yet she still believes in a god! How is that possible? The two are in my opinion the nemesis of each other. Like you I  dont care what or who people believe in as long as they dont try and force there beliefs on others.This brings me around to me,when I was a child(long time ago) my father would take us all to church every Sunday without fail,no excuses.This lasted till I was 15-16,when I realise what a crock of **** it all was.(my opinion).My other brothers and sisters along with me are now all non-church goers.My kids have been allowed to make there own minds up on the matter,I do not tell them one way or the other.I think the first part of the bible story is basically that; 'a story' I think the wife must see it as that,and the second part I believe there was a man by the name of Jesus who preached and died on the cross.But that is all he was, a man who had solid beliefs in what he was preaching.

Thats my bit  

[Dr Sadako]

I think that science and religion not necessarily are opposites that aren't miscible. Sure if you are a stone cold creationist you will have problem being a scientist as there are facts to evolution etc that without doubt crushes all beleifs of the earth being created 7000 years ago. If we disregard the Bible to some extent as it is written by man at a time where science was non existent, there is no contradiction in believing in God and being a scientist. God could have created the universe billions and billions of years ago. There is no evidence in that he/she/it did or did not and I for one think it nothing to argue about as it can't be proved. If you want to believe in big bang or that God is big bang, be my guest. It is as Niel stated above no problem as long as no one forces his/hers beliefs on the next person.

I think that God and Science (maybe God is science ) works well if you don't add creationism (any religions creationism for that matter) into the mix. There are undisputable evidence on the forming of earth, expansion of the universe, evolution, DNA inheritage etc that you can't disregard if you are a true scientist.

Finally it is important to discuss WHY should Christianities creastionism be the right version of what happened? Maybe the tree worshipers in in Africa got it right ...

[DonkeyCheeseGrater]

Oooh oooh did you have to bring this up this week?  I am snowed under with work.  But just to make it interesting i am a Young Earth Creationist.  
The first thing that needs to be done is to unravel what is science (fact) from what is THEORY.  One of the problems is that the two become mixed and certain theorys become understood as proven fact, when they are actually someones  theory of how the facts fit together.

Late for a meeting now let the discussions commence, i will join in as soon as i can

One last comment to stoke the fires of debate.  Science does not contradict God, only peoples theorys, of how all the science fits together.  Evolution theory is a religion like Christianity, it is an interpretation of the facts which you must choose to believe.  

This is going to be fun

[Benny]

I suppose it depends if you the argument is going to go as follows..

Evo - Men evolved from monkeys
Cre - But god made that happen
Evo - The planets go round the Sun due to gravity,
Cre - God made that happen too.


But, I think Sadako has it, there is no Adam and Eve, we can pretty much theorise based on fact all the way back to the big bang, what created that is another question. I don't think that evolution is a religion per say, the facts are there.....or am I barking up the wrong tree..

[Dingo]

Originally posted by Benny@Jul 27 2004, 10:47 AM

Can anyone present me a good argument as to why I should believe in a god?

Well you were at the last LAN Benny....you met Sadako....so there is clearly a God!!







...........but if you lose all the baggage that comes with religions and look at the advances that Science has made in the last few years (Embryo cloning, man made fibres, Nuclear power and all the household items around you have been created by the application of Science) then it would not be too difficult to make the leap to the premise that Scientist(s) could have created planets or even Universes in much the same way as perhaps man shapes the environment for all other creatures on this planet (after mother nature of course!!).



Whilst it may not be within the grasp of all to imagine or contemplate........

Knowing how Einstein arrived at E=MC2 helps us appreciate that we are all capable of achieving similar breakthroughs. Each of us is capable of waking up one day and realizing that:

The truth about life may not be what we've been told;

The truth about life may be very different than what most learned people believe;

We don't always need proof, evidence, or the agreement of others to embrace a new "truth" if we have good reason to believe in it's utility.



I therefore put it to you Benny that modern man's (last three thousand years) perception of God has been misinformed due to ignorance or inability to grasp a concept where Science is both the creator and destroyer of all things!!


Therefore (as Sadakos post) Science is a God :ph34r:





....and don't forget to make a donation on the way out!! :dribble:

[DonkeyCheeseGrater]

Originally posted by Benny@Jul 27 2004, 12:25 PM
I suppose it depends if you the argument is going to go as follows..

Evo - Men evolved from monkeys
Cre - But god made that happen
Evo - The planets go round the Sun due to gravity,
Cre - God made that happen too.


But, I think Sadako has it, there is no Adam and Eve, we can pretty much theorise based on fact all the way back to the big bang, what created that is another question. I don't think that evolution is a religion per say, the facts are there.....or am I barking up the wrong tree..

Let me make my beliefs clear.  I am a young earth creationist.  I do not believe the earth is Billions of years old.  I do not believe in the gap-theory creationist view.  I do not believe that my great great great great grandad was a monkey.  I believe that there was a literal 7 day creation aprox. 6000 years ago and yep Adam and Eve started it all   Oh and messed it all up  <_<

[suicidal_monkey]

Originally posted by Sadako@Jul 27 2004, 11:43 AM
There is no evidence in that he/she/it did or did not and I for one think it nothing to argue about as it can't be proved.

That'd be the problem with this whole arguement :withstupid:

You could consider religion a scientific theory, and one which has never been proven. Trouble is most people who believe in a God don't spend any time/effort/money into trying to prove that god does exist. They expect those who don't believe to prove the negative arguement, which is impossible(imo). As soon as you think there's proof god doesn't exist the ones who do believe will simply say "it's gods will" to let xyz happen. The arguement is a deadlock, unwinnable.

Either you belive a god (or gods) exist, you believe it/they don't exist, or you don't know/care whether you believe either way. You can't really argue against religion using "facts" down because religion is a matter of belief, so there's always a way out. It's like the "because I said so" arguement parents resort to.

Why should you believe in a God Benny? You shouldn't, ...if you don't believe in one. You believe if you believe.  If you're not sure what to believe that's fine too. You can't (or rather, shouldn't) force/fool yourself into believing either way.

For the record I don't really believe in a god, though I tend not to think about it much anymore. My basic point of view is that if there is a god (or gods) they really don't give a damn about how we are faring else it/they might do something about it (of course free will solves that arguement - you're free to not worship, it's your right, even if you do believe!) and communities that worship/ritualise stuff don't seem to have any better luck than those that don't, so I'd rather not waste my time praying and going to church.

I quite like the thought of some sort of "energy/chi/life-force" and the whole "peace-of-mind" idea. Those relaxing, mind-over-matter/body type things.

There are certainly a great deal of unanswered questions about the universe we will probably never understand.

I think religion was conceptualised to keep law and order and to keep a hold over populations, although it sometimes manages to stimulate quite the opposite effect. democracy, police, the legal system, "morals", etc are what we (should) use these days instead though. Pity human beings are so useless at getting along with eachother really isn't it.

[Dr Sadako]

Originally posted by DonkeyCheeseGrater@Jul 27 2004, 02:01 PM
Let me make my beliefs clear. I am a young earth creationist. I do not believe the earth is Billions of years old. I do not believe in the gap-theory creationist view. I do not believe that my great great great great grandad was a monkey. I believe that there was a literal 7 day creation aprox. 6000 years ago and yep Adam and Eve started it all  Oh and messed it all up <_<

You are entitled to your beliefs and if you think Adam and Eve kicked it all that is fine.

I will state my background so you know where I am coming from an why I don't believe that earth was created 6000 years ago. First of all I have a Christian upbringing. Both my parents worked in as missonaries in Africa and my father is a creationist and was a teacher of physics and maths! My mother were a nurse but not a creationist. She was more of a "both feet firmly on the ground" kind of woman in my eyes. She firmly believed in God and she also had a science background in chemistry/biology/medicine she belived in evolution.
I myself have been in the field of science since high school (called gymnasium here in Sweden) and I went on studying chemical engineering (5 years) and recieved my M.Sc. 2000. I went on with science as a graduate student (5 years in Sweden) in materials chemistry and nanotechnology. Hopefully I will receive my PhD in December this year. So for the last 10 years I have been involved full time in science.

Radiocarbon dating
Why do I not believe that the earth was created 6000 years ago? First of all we have objects that have been C-14 dated that is older than this.

The C-14 Method or Radiocarbon Method is the oldest physical method, which allows to determine the age of a thing. The method is named after its principle, it is based on the natural radioactive decay of the carbon isotope C14. It was developed in the 1950s by a team of scientists under Professor Willard F. Libby of the University of Chicago. Libby received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his method to use Carbon-14 for age determinations in archaeology, geology, geophysics, and other branches of science." in 1960.

First a word on how the name of this method is written. The C14 is a isotope of carbon, which is otherwise C12 or C13. The C means carbon, the number gives the atomic weight rounded. There are various ways to write it, C14, C-14, 14C etc.

Carbon is a very common element. The atmosphere contains a certain amount of carbon dioxide, a gas which is composed on carbon and oxygene. But there are three different kinds of carbon, which differ in a way that all are still true carbon, but their atomic structure is different. Two are called C12 and C13, carbon with an atomic weight of twelve or thirteen respectively - which are the normal and stable carbon - and the last one is C14, an isotope of carbon, which is subject to a very slow and harmless radioactive decay. This decay results in radiation and a stable isotope. So if you take some carbon with C12, C13 and C14 and wait long enough, you will only have C12 and C13 left.

The dating using any kind of isotopes is based on determining the ratio between stable isotopes and non-stable isotopes. If we know where we started, and if we know the half-life (amount of time it takes for half of the isotopes to break down) we can compute the necessary time to reach todays state.  

Life on earth is based on carbon, which is gathered from food or from the air. The carbon dioxide is reduced by plants into carbon and oxygen in a process called photosynthesis. So the plants contain carbon from the atmosphere. In an excavation we often find things which contain some carbon. Charcoal in furnaces or fire places is common, also charcoal used for drawing cave paintings. Other organic remains also contain carbon, like leather, wooden tools, seeds or other food and sometimes bones. So it should be rather easy to find something with carbon in a layer we want to date.

C14 dating is a very usefull dating method with some important drawbacks. It works only if we have some carbon and know its origin. Unfortunately there is a much bigger drawback: the half-life of C14 is only 5730±40 years. So the amount of C14 vanishes rather fast, and if it is too little to be measured exactly, we can not determine the age any more. So this method is only usefull for archeologic dating. It works very well for the last 30,000 years, but becomes more and more inaccurate for older samples.

Thermoluminescence
Absolute dating technique used for rocks, minerals and ceramics. It is based on the fact that almost all natural minerals are thermoluminescent-they emit light when heated. Energy absorbed from ionizing radiation frees electrons to move through the crystal lattice and some are trapped at imperfections. In the lab, ceramic samples are heated, releasing the trapped electrons and producing light that is measured to fix a date.

Obsidian hydration
Absolute dating technique that measures the microscopic amount of water absorbed on freshly broken obsidian surfaces. The principle behind obsidian hydration dating is simple-the longer the artifact surface has been exposed, the thicker the hydration band will be-but its application requires careful analysis of absorption rates for different obsidian sources. Obsidian hydration can indicate an artifact's age if the datable surfaces tested are only those exposed by deliberate flintknapping, rather than by accidental breakage.

Dendrochronology
Also referred to as tree-ring dating, this absolute dating technique uses annual growth rings of trees from a single region to compare and match sequences of growth rings to determine that date when the tree was first cut down. Dendrochronology is also used to calibrate radiocarbon dates.



There are without a doubt independent techniques to verify objects that are older than 6000 years old.There are more techniques than these of course.

[Whitey]

If there is a god would it's ego be so large that it would want/need to be worshipped ?
In my opinion  (and I went to church fot 12 years), other than the social aspect it's a waste of time.

[DonkeyCheeseGrater]

Regarding Radiocarbon dating.
To use this of course there would be two assumptions you would have to make.
1.   That the amount of Carbon 14 in the atmosphere has always remained constant.
2.   Its rate of decay has also always remained constant.

Neither of these assumptions is provable.
Scientists do not know whether the Carbon 14 decay rate has remained constant or whether the amount in the atmosphere has also remained constant.
Supposedly present testing reveals that the levels in the atmosphere have been increasing since the 1950s when it was first measured.  This would of course suggest that plants and animals of the past would have differing levels of Carbon 14 to start with, which in itself upsets totally the data obtained by C 14 dating.  Another interesting point with these increasing levels is that we have not yet reached the point of equilibrium, where sunlight causing C 14 in the atmosphere and normal radioactive decay ‘takes it out’.  There must come a point where the formation rate and the radioactive decay rate would equalise â€" equilibrium.  Supposedly a new earth would require 30,000 years to reach the point of equilibrium, yet the levels are still increasing.

Regarding Dendrochronology. (which I personally know jack about)
Quote from Don Batten PhD.
Tree ring dating (dendrochronology) has been used in an attempt to extend the calibration of carbon-14 dating earlier than historical records allow. The oldest living trees, such as the Bristlecone Pines (Pinus longaeva) of the White Mountains of Eastern California, were dated in 1957 by counting tree rings at 4,723 years old. This would mean they pre-dated the Flood which occurred around 4,350 years ago, taking a straight-forward approach to Biblical chronology.
However, when the interpretation of scientific data contradicts the true history of the world as revealed in the Bible, then it’s the interpretation of the data that is at fault. It’s important to remember that we have limited data, and new discoveries have often overturned previous ‘hard facts’.
Recent research on seasonal effects on tree rings in other trees in the same genus, the plantation pine Pinus radiata, has revealed that up to five rings per year can be produced and extra rings are often indistinguishable, even under the microscope, from annual rings. As a tree physiologist I would say that evidence of false rings in any woody tree species would cast doubt on claims that any particular species has never in the past produced false rings. Evidence from within the same genus surely counts much more strongly against such a notion. Creationists have shown that the Biblical kind is usually larger than the ‘species’ and in many cases even larger than the ’genus’
Considering that the immediate post-Flood world would have been wetter with less contrasting seasons until the Ice Age waned, many extra growth rings would have been produced in the Bristlecone pines (even though extra rings are not produced today because of the seasonal extremes). Taking this into account would bring the age of the oldest living Bristlecone Pine into the post-Flood era.
Claimed older tree ring chronologies depend on the cross-matching of tree ring patterns of pieces of dead wood found near living trees. This procedure depends on temporal placement of fragments of wood using carbon-14 (14C) dating, assuming straight-line extrapolation backwards of the carbon dating. Having placed the fragment of wood approximately using the 14C data, a matching tree-ring pattern is sought with wood that has a part with overlapping 14C age and that also extends to a younger age. A tree ring pattern that matches is found close to where the carbon ‘dates’ are the same. And so the tree-ring sequence is extended from the living trees backwards.
Now superficially this sounds fairly reasonable. However, it is a circular process. It assumes that it is approximately correct to linearly extrapolate the carbon ‘clock’ backwards. There are good reasons for doubting this. The closer one gets back to the Flood the more inaccurate the linear extrapolation of the carbon clock would become, perhaps radically so. Conventional carbon-14 dating assumes that the system has been in equilibrium for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, and that 14C is thoroughly mixed in the atmosphere. However, the Flood buried large quantities of organic matter containing the common carbon isotope, 12C, so the 14C/12C ratio would rise after the Flood, because 14C is produced from nitrogen, not carbon. These factors mean that early post-Flood wood would look older than it really is and the ‘carbon clock’ is not linear in this period .
The biggest problem with the process is that ring patterns are not unique. There are many points in a given sequence where a sequence from a new piece of wood match well (note that even two trees growing next to each other will not have identical growth ring patterns). Yamaguchi1 recognized that ring pattern matches are not unique. The best match (using statistical tests) is often rejected in favour of a less exact match because the best match is deemed to be ‘incorrect’ (particularly if it is too far away from the carbon-14 ‘age’). So the carbon ‘date’ is used to constrain just which match is acceptable. Consequently, the calibration is a circular process and the tree ring chronology extension is also a circular process that is dependent on assumptions about the carbon dating system.2
The extended tree ring chronologies are far from absolute, in spite of the popular hype. To illustrate this we only have to consider the publication and subsequent withdrawal of two European tree-ring chronologies. According to David Rohl, the Sweet Track chronology from Southwest England was ‘re-measured’ when it did not agree with the published dendrochronology from Northern Ireland (Belfast). Also, the construction of a detailed sequence from southern Germany was abandoned in deference to the Belfast chronology, even though the authors of the German study had been confidant of its accuracy until the Belfast one was published. It is clear that dendrochronology is not a clear-cut, objective dating method despite the extravagant claims of some of its advocates.
Conclusion
Extended tree ring chronology is not an independent confirmation/calibration of carbon dating earlier than historically validated dates, as has been claimed.
/Close quotes

[Anonymous]

However, when the interpretation of scientific data contradicts the true history of the world as revealed in the Bible, then it’s the interpretation of the data that is at fault.

You just can't beat a well justified argument  <_<

[suicidal_monkey]

Originally posted by BlueBall@Jul 27 2004, 04:26 PM

However, when the interpretation of scientific data contradicts the true history of the world as revealed in the Bible, then it’s the interpretation of the data that is at fault.

You just can't beat a well justified argument  <_< [/b]

what about the interpretation of the bible? ...plus the interpretation of the world by the guys who wrote the various parts of the bible. 'tis human to err I hear.

[Dr Sadako]

Originally posted by DonkeyCheeseGrater@Jul 27 2004, 05:20 PM
Regarding Radiocarbon dating.
To use this of course there would be two assumptions you would have to make.
1.   That the amount of Carbon 14 in the atmosphere has always remained constant.
2.   Its rate of decay has also always remained constant.
 

I was so expecting that.
Well, you just have to go to artica or antartica and take a ice sample to show that. Really isn't hard to show at all. The C14 in the atmosphere hasn't been constant and this has been taken into account. As I stated in my post above C14 is only certain enough 30000 years back. Lets say for discussions sake that it was only certain 10000 years back. There are finds of plants, animals, dinosaurs, homo sapiens, tools, that are older than 6000 years. How do you explain these finds? It is very typical of all creationism theory to attack C14 dating without commenting these finds. It is also very common of creationist to use C14 dating as proof when works for their purposes e.g. dating of the shroud of Christ or the crusifix.  <_<

Regarding your 2., the rate of decay is constant and there is nothing you or I can do anything about it. It is elementary physics/chemistry. If it wasn't constant then all other isotopes with half-lifes could have undergone (or undergo as we speak) change of rate and that is not possible. If it was so then we would live in a very unstable (and unliveable) environment. If you truly believe that then you cannot believe in the periodic table of elements, atoms, protons, neutrons or electrons, it even defies Newtonian physics and in turn gravity!

Don't get me started on the Flood. If the earth was covered by 2000-3000 meters of water (as it must if the ark has stranded on mount Ararat) where and how did that volume of water disappear? The sun shone as much then as now. It is physically impossible.