I have now met a real life creationist.

[Learner]

The "elegance" of a theory is enough.

Nothing wrong with science fiction I suppose.

 

[none]

The big bang is happening

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

The bible says;
Genesis 1:1. The universe came into existence.

Science says;

1. The universe had always existed.

2. No, wait, there was a Big Bang and its only 13.7 billion years old.

3. Whoops. Sorry folks, false alarm it has always existed, expanding and contracting over and over and over. Back to our first guess.

4. Stop the clock! We now think there are multiple universes popping into and out of existence.

5. ? As scientists we always keep our options open. Logical positivism and falsifiability are so antiquated. The "elegance" of a theory is enough.

...meanwhile Genesis 1:1 still says the same thing it has always stated.

² And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Depends on how you interpret Genesis. Apparently a formless "deep" existed, and God merely transformed it, according to Genesis. That deep apparently preceded the Earth and heavens. Nothing in Genesis says God created that.

 

[Ford]

The bible says;
Genesis 1:1. The universe came into existence.

Science says;

1. The universe had always existed.

2. No, wait, there was a Big Bang and its only 13.7 billion years old.

3. Whoops. Sorry folks, false alarm it has always existed, expanding and contracting over and over and over. Back to our first guess.

4. Stop the clock! We now think there are multiple universes popping into and out of existence.

5. ? As scientists we always keep our options open. Logical positivism and falsifiability are so antiquated. The "elegance" of a theory is enough.

...meanwhile Genesis 1:1 still says the same thing it has always stated.

Science realizes that it can be wrong, and adjusts accordingly. Genesis keeps saying the same thing it has always stated, and never once considers any other possibility.

 

[Lion IRC]

Truth doesn't need editing.
Science texts books, on the other hand, are out of date very soon after printing.

 

[Ford]

Truth doesn't need editing.
Science texts books, on the other hand, are out of date very soon after printing.

What text books are you talking about?

 

[bilby]

Truth doesn't need editing.
Science texts books, on the other hand, are out of date very soon after printing.

So which Genesis account is the truth?

Chapter 1 has a different sequence from Chapter 2; and both contradict what is known about reality.

That says that at least one cannot be true if we accept the other; and that both must be false if science works.

And science does work. If it didn't, we would all still be showing our goats stripey sticks to get stripey kids.

How did you determine that the Genesis account you hold to be true was, in fact, the truth? What methodology did you apply?

And if the biblical account is true, and truth doesn't require editing, how do you explain the existence of scores of different editions of the Bible? Which edition do you consider to be the truth?

 

[DrZoidberg]

Science and religion aren't equally valuable.

God is way more important than science.

Ok, fine. But even if true, since there's no way of knowing anything about God, we might as well just ignore God and only go with science. Right?

 

[DrZoidberg]

The bible says;
Genesis 1:1. The universe came into existence.

Written by people with bronze age scientific knowledge about the world.

Science says;

1. The universe had always existed.

2. No, wait, there was a Big Bang and its only 13.7 billion years old.

3. Whoops. Sorry folks, false alarm it has always existed, expanding and contracting over and over and over. Back to our first guess.

4. Stop the clock! We now think there are multiple universes popping into and out of existence.

5. ? As scientists we always keep our options open. Logical positivism and falsifiability are so antiquated. The "elegance" of a theory is enough.

Yeah, well, the universe is weird and defies common sense. We rarely find what we thought we would. Which is an argument against religious theories. Since they're most often about taking something mundane and basic and projecting it into the world. For instance, the Christian God can be seen as a kind of perfect parent. The parent we all wished we had. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Same goes for heaven.

It's not the "elegance" of the theory that counts, it's the "elegance" of the maths supporting it. It's not aesthetics. Usually, the less convoluted a mathematical proof is, the more likely it is to describe nature accurately. An elegant mathematical proof is easy to generalise to solve similar problems. But even for aesthetics, we often think things are more beautiful when they can be described simply with mathematics. We think symmetry is beautiful for example. That's why the term is often used.

...meanwhile Genesis 1:1 still says the same thing it has always stated.

How is that an argument for it? The fact that it hasn't been updated in 1700 years should make us suspicious of it's contents, right?

 

[DrZoidberg]

Truth doesn't need editing.
Science texts books, on the other hand, are out of date very soon after printing.

Erm.... have you read Genesis? It's out of date. BTW, Christian theology was out of date before Christianity was created. The omnipotence paradoxes are genuine problems for Christianity. The ancient Greeks came up with the paradoxes just as games of logic. Well before anybody had the idea of believing in an omnipotent God. The logic is still solid. The Christian God doesn't work logically. There's also the problem that a universe created by God would look different than the one we have.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Wilson, is your name Gerard? An American Jehovas Wittness just rang on my doorbell asking if I wanted to learn about the Bible.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Science realizes that it can be wrong, and adjusts accordingly.

And sometimes it's not even wrong, but it adjusts.

Part of my job involves the programming of missiles with the direction of 'down' as an aid to navigation. Far as human senses are concerned, 'down' never really changes. But we keep developing more and more sensitive equipment to measure the exact speed of gravity's attraction, and the exact direction, AND calculate the effect these variances have on the navigation of the inertial guidance system.
So each generation of the SLBM gets more sensitive to the changes in gravity it'll experience across the flight, and each software update does better and better at keeping the variations from causing a cumulative error in the delivery.

The true value for gravity at any given point on or above the Earth's surface doesn't change. I don't think it's even possible to 'edit' the 'truth,' but we can update our understanding of the truth any time we get a better tool for measuring it, or better math for describing it, or better models for anticipating it. None of that makes any of the previous values 'not true,' just not as accurate as they could be, given the best tech/math/theory available.

 

[none]

Truth doesn't need editing.
Science texts books, on the other hand, are out of date very soon after printing.

That's how we get smarter

 

[Lion IRC]

Truth doesn't need editing.
Science texts books, on the other hand, are out of date very soon after printing.

Erm.... have you read Genesis?

Yeah, I have glanced at it once or twice.
...skimmed it.

...It's out of date.

Nope.
The bible is the most widely read, most widely published book in history.

... BTW, Christian theology was out of date before Christianity was created.

That makes no sense.
Christian theology can't pre-date Christianity.

... The omnipotence paradoxes are genuine problems for Christianity.

No. Rationalwiki and Skeptics Annotated Bible and Iron Chariots etc think omnipotence is a "genuine" problem for Christianity. But I'm not a theologian and even I can harmonize omnipotence with any of the false dilemmas skeptics raise.

... The ancient Greeks came up with the paradoxes just as games of logic.

Which is what they are - mind games.
There is no invented theoretical paradox for which you can't invent an equally theoretical solution.

Science and religion aren't equally valuable.

God is way more important than science.

Ok, fine. But even if true, since there's no way of knowing anything about God, we might as well just ignore God and only go with science. Right?

^^^^
WUT?? You're claiming that an omnipotent God can't make Himself known.

... Well before anybody had the idea of believing in an omnipotent God. The logic is still solid. The Christian God doesn't work logically.

This is metaphysics pal!
God 'works' just fine.

... There's also the problem that a universe created by God would look different than the one we have.

Citation needed.

 

[James Brown]

Truth doesn't need editing.
Science texts books, on the other hand, are out of date very soon after printing.

Yep, uncovering additional evidence can result in a change of conclusion. That's not a bug in science; that's a feature.

Much like when a police detective, after discovering additional clues, will change who he suspects committed the crime. He could just stick with the original suspect, evidence be damned, so that no one can accuse him of "editing the truth", but then he would be a horrible detective.

You're right that truth doesn't need editing. The problem is that truth can be difficult to discover. You think it's easy knowing what happened 13 billion years ago?

Of course, there have been periods when science textbooks weren't frequently edited. People simply declared, "Aristotle said it" and that ended the discussion. Unfortunately, it turned out that "Aristotle said it" and "Aristotle was right" were not the same thing.

 Ipse_dixit

 

[bilby]

You could never learn how to build a smartphone if you only used textbooks from forty years ago.

You couldn't learn how to build a silicon chip using only textbooks from a century ago.

You couldn't even learn how to build a steam engine using only textbooks from two hundred and fifty years ago.

And four hundred years ago, there were no textbooks, because nobody knew how to print hundreds of identical books in a reasonable amount of time.

And yet we are supposed to be able to learn all about how to live from a four hundred year old edition, of a 1,700 year old book, that purports to tell of events six thousand years ago?

A book that is supposedly a repository of an unchanging and eternal truth and moral guidance, and which includes instructions on how much you are allowed to beat your slaves?

Fuck that shit.

You would have to be a complete moron to even consider the idea of doing anything so stupid as to get advice on anything from an outdated load of immoral claptrap like that.

 

[Lion IRC]

"Do to others as you would have them do to you."
Luke 6:31

 

[bilby]

"Do to others as you would have them do to you."
Luke 6:31

https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?10603-Why-is-it-so-important-for-atheists-that-God-does-not-exist&p=414734&viewfull=1#post414734

Stealing the credit for things that they have no real claim to - now that's very Christian indeed.

Exodus 21:
20 And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished.
21 Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.

Of course, you could claim that this no longer applies - but that would fly in the face of 'The truth doesn't need editing', so to do so would be hugely hypocritical.

 

[Lion IRC]

Murder is (still) a crime deserving punishment.
Nothing outdated there.

 

[Lion IRC]

I guess ancient slave owners probably thought of their slaves in much the the same way as an abortion-on-demand activist thinks of an unborn baby.
...except that even they knew murdering 'your own' slave was wrong.