From LiveScience:
Early humans had feet like ours and left lasting impressions in the form of 1.5 million-year-old footprints, some of which were made by feet that could wear a size 9 men’s shoe.
The findings at a Northern Kenya site represent the oldest evidence of modern-human foot anatomy. They also help tell an ancestral story of humans who had fully transitioned from tree-dwellers to land walkers.
[Updated to add another photo]
A photograph of the footprint’s upper footprint surface showing good definition of the toe pads; the second toe is partially obscured by the third toe. Credit: Matthew Bennett/Bournemouth University
Tags: Evolution, footprints
Hey, I’ve got no quarrel with the evolution thing, but I have to tell you I don’t see how they can be so sure these are footprints!
It’s too much like finding the face of the Blessed Virgin on a potato chip for me!
Well, the link has some other photos. This particular one (which I chose because it has some groovy colours) is:
“Optical laser scan images for a series of footprints showing dimensions and depth. Credit: Matthew Bennett/Bournemouth University”
Evolutionary Potato Chips ?
Why does that second photo have only four toes?
“1.5 million year old foot prints”…
Do they actually care to admit how they came up with this date? Evidence based upon guess-ti-mation? Not my cup of tea.
Rev – may not be an exact date, but I would think they can tell the difference between 6,000 and a million plus.
Evolution is easy to understand. God created what was to be the stuff that would evolve into what we now experience as reality and called it into being with a bang.
Where this issue becomes touchy is atheists and agnostics cannot wrap their minds around the fact that the wisdom of God is the motor that makes all things possible. It is information that is the backdrop of what made our universe/reality possible.
And the reason for that is easy to understand. To acknowledge God is to do the same for his providence and what he requires from us his creatures. And that is a problem for those who think all this, that is all we see, came from nothing, of a something from nothing that cannot be explained.
Hi Charles.
Those who disregard the Creator have a problem with what He wants and desires. It is not they can’t believe, it is that they won’t believe because of the the moral dilemma it creates.
Ha I just said create again!
Skippy, the second and third toes is probably so close, or even webbed, they left one, larger print.
It is called simple syndactyly and is quite common, even today, with those two particular toes. There is a picture HERE
DJM, the article says the footprints are the “oldest evidence of modern-human foot anatomy”.
How does an old footprint of modern-human foot anatomy support evolution?
Thanks DJM.
song – I think another thing atheists and agnostics cannot wrap their minds around is the idea that an all knowing creator would create a limitless universe with trillions and trillions of earth-like planets and then spend all his time and efforts on the one little planet here.
That would be like growing acres and acres of grass, and then spending all you time caring for and trimming one single blade. It makes no sense. It is illogical.
The statistical probability of life forming somewhere in our vast universe without the injection of divine intervention is almost a certainty. The fact we have developed enough to understand this was only our good fortune.
BuddyG, the article says:
“The researchers identified the footprints as probably belonging to a member of Homo ergaster, an early form of Homo erectus. Such prints include modern foot features such as a rounded heel, a human-like arch and a big toe that sits parallel to other toes.
By contrast, apes have more curved fingers and toes made for grasping tree branches. The earliest human ancestors, such as Australopithecus afarensis, still possessed many ape-like features more than 2 million years ago — the well-known “Lucy” specimen represents one such example.”
This print could have been an early example of foot wrapping and proof that the Chinese were not first to adopt it.
Consider this. I am an early creature that is evolving towards the fleshly form that was to be ultimately intro-breathed the life of a living spirit and I had a problem with my feet and stepped into mud. Heck…my print was left there as was subsequently used by many to prove some that I was not.
I find one print to be of no value for either side of the issue and furthermore those who use a one off fossil here and there to prove their point to be absurd.
song – that print is not indicative to Chinese foot wrapping. In fact, the toes are leveled out, which would not be the case in a foot wrapping.
DJM, those footprints look like ones I might leave in the mud. So it doesn’t appear to prove very much.
DJM
I tend to agree with that. We have no idea what the Eternal is doing in his expansive creation.
Paul wrote to the effect we have no idea just what it is He is doing and what we can expect He has done. Eye has not seen, nor ear heard just what He has prepared. And I suspect that is universe wide.
We as spirits will be amazed or disappointed once we are allowed to see the truth once we stand before the throne. Sad for those who failed to see the magnificence of what was going on, and joy for those who wanted to see it.
Now that black & white photo looks a lot more like a real footprint.
DJM—– I’m not seeing the logical connection between I-THINK-THERE-IS-LIFE-ON-OTHER-PLANETS and THEREFORE-THERE-IS-NO-GOD. I think you skipped a few steps!
DJM
I was using the foot wrapping as an example where the analysis of one print might be construed as faulty based on the fact that your feet may not be as perfect as others.
Where I work I have to examine inmates feet as they are booked.
I’ve seen similar and much more worse feet.
FYI, we have to check incoming inmates feet for contraband.
S&DM, in my experience it’s more practical and worthwhile to work at accepting God rather than trying to understand God.
Buddy—- Yeah, but if you accept God, then you have to let Him IN and listen. If you wait until you understand Him first, see, you can put that off forever! (I had that gig going for y-e-a-r-s!)
I know in whom I believe
You don’t have to be an electrician to turn on a light !
BuddyG
Hear hear. I was merely postulating to a point. The facts, that we don’t know already, will be revealed in due time. Or rather, outside/without time.
S&DM, I was agreeing with you !
LOL – I’m borrowing that.
I’m stealing that one too!
Whoops, I hear one of the kids is crying. Gotta go check. G’nite everyone.
I did a bike riding trip in Utah years ago and we, my buddy Smitty and I, came across some dino prints in rock on the Klondike Bluffs trail just north of Moab. I have the pics of where we found them with gloves laid by the tracks for reference and size. This dinosaur was small because the footprint was only as big as a large glove.
Anyway it was very cool to find them.
Cool indeed. Love that area. Love the West actually. Especially southern Colorado, northern NM, parts of Utah……..oh, wherever!
Never ran into a dino print though.
Rev – may not be an exact date, but I would think they can tell the difference between 6,000 and a million plus.
Oh you mean the same willful ignorance about petrification? How long does fossilization take? How long does it take for a rock to be made? Oil? Ahhh yes the oil question. Just when we think we are so smart and have it all figured out, we then suddenly figure out how to make oil within a couple days time.
Anastasia
That corner where Utah meets Colorado and NM is amazing. One must not forget the north eastern portion of Arizona. We drove south from Utah into Monument Valley and because we were leaving Utah and heading home didn’ t stop.
Glorious view.
I have explored the greater part of what CA has to offer being that I lived there all my life, but now I’m fixated on Colorado and No. NM. We did Red River last year.
I have taken my son to Joshua Tree, CA 3 times and he wants to go there AGAIN this year. I want to bike Telluride and the surounding areas. I suspect I will acquiesce because climbing rocks is always fun. Especially big round and challenging rocks.
Lake Tahoe is a place I would like to go to again. The Flume Trail and Rose mtn is always an anticipated do-again.
I think I will begin lobbying for Telluride and damn the torpedoes of youth. Also, it’s closer.
Gotta love the circular reasoning used for their “scientific” dating methods. Evolutionist are so unscientific, total w******.
Leave it to the socialist scum to destroy civilization with their unscientific evolutionism religion.
I mean they do date things after their index fossils that they date by the layer and the layer by the index fossils. Circular reasoning of communist evolutionists.
The problem of circular reasoning in dating the rocks
http://www.creationworldview.org/articles_view.asp?id=42
The Dating Game
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2006/0816dating-game.asp
Here’s man and dinosaur tracks together:
http://www.bible.ca/tracks/tracks.htm
“but man had not evolved yet how can this be?”
Well evolutionism is not true.
In Americas stupid run to become as retarded as the rest of the world they have fully embraced the retarded teaching of man evolving from slime… USA what happened to you guys? Why did you buy into the socialists lies? Socialists are retarded people that should be in psychwards, not listened to.
Wake up already.
Why do we still have apes and monkeys? Were they the stubborn branch of the family tree? They decided they were fine just as they are, but the rest of the uss could go ahead and evolve without them?
Oh yeah, I went off topic.
I want my next vacation to be a big bang and evolve into a great time.
/charles. Hi. Oh yeah. Err. read the rest of my posts here and there and you will not be able to accuse me of anything that might suit your need to disparage me, a former poster of you ILLUSTRIOUS sight, that others may use to find that you are stretching.
O btw. You can use this post/
revparadigm, you might want to Google “radiometric dating.” The technique uses known half-lives of radioactive isotopes.
There is no real evidence for transitional biological links . But hey, if you ask the evolutionists they will provide you a link to a link.
Arwyn, apes such as chimps and monkeys are just different branches from us off a common ancestor having both ape-like and human-like attributes (and attributes of neither).
What you might like to ponder is why there is only one existing species of “human.” Most unusual. Last time I checked, the prevailing view was that, uh, we killed off everything close to us that could compete.
I was being sloppy. The term “apes” is not very scientific. From Wikipedia:
* Superfamily Hominoidea[1]
o Family Hylobatidae: gibbons
+ Genus Hylobates
# Lar Gibbon or White-handed Gibbon, H. lar
# Agile Gibbon or Black-handed Gibbon, H. agilis
# Müller’s Bornean Gibbon, H. muelleri
# Silvery Gibbon, H. moloch
# Pileated Gibbon or Capped Gibbon, H. pileatus
# Kloss’s Gibbon or Mentawai Gibbon or Bilou, H. klossii
# Western Hoolock Gibbon, H. hoolock
# Eastern Hoolock Gibbon, H. leuconedys
# Siamang, H. syndactylus
+ Genus Nomascus
# Black Crested Gibbon, N. concolor
# Eastern Black Crested Gibbon, N. nasutus
# White-cheeked Crested Gibbon, N. leucogenys
# Yellow-cheeked Gibbon, N. gabriellae
o Family Hominidae: great apes
+ Genus Pongo: orangutans
# Bornean Orangutan, P. pygmaeus
# Sumatran Orangutan, P. abelii
+ Genus Gorilla: gorillas
# Western Gorilla, G. gorilla
# Eastern Gorilla, G. beringei
+ Genus Homo: humans
# Human, H. sapiens
+ Genus Pan: chimpanzees
# Common Chimpanzee, P. troglodytes
# Bonobo, P. paniscus
lol, not my view, SK. I just think we were too awesome to match.
Often imitated, never duplicated.
But I’m one of those dummies that admits I don’t know how God did it.
Boy that’s hard to read. Just visit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ape
And go to “Classification and evolution.”
So everyone knows the dating of fossils is empirical in its findings. There is little argument to be found the earth is younger than what is now claimed by science.
What is most important is finding just what that means in light of what has been witnessed by those who find new evidence is a stick in the craw of the god deniers. They will not admit it, no way, no how.
That is, science is merely catching up to what was proclaimed by those who claimed to be witnesses of what God has declared.
This might be a problem for evolutionary atheists.
But I don’t even LIKE bananas!
(can y’all tell I’m not very passionate about this one?)
Notice that in the Genus “Homo” there is only one species. Compare to the others. While I would prefer to agree with Arwyn, I think we just need to think of what Chucky does to think that the other explanation is more plausible.
Arwyn, at least you can be comfortable in the knowledge that we did not evolve from chimps.
I see that Bible Believer thinks that human beings were hanging out with the dinosaurs. It must be true! After all, I’m no socialist, so I have to believe it!
Here’s some more debunking of the dating games the socialist evolutionists bring us with their unscientific claims and their assumptions:
The Radiometric Dating Game
http://www.trueorigin.org/dating.asp
it’s ridiculous is what it is.
Revolution Against Evolution
http://www.rae.org/
Here’s a nice pic for you all:
http://bayimg.com/image/dancdaabn.jpg
DJM
the second and third toes is probably so close, or even webbed, they left one, larger print.
It is called simple syndactyly and is quite common, even today,…
Great post by the way, science is great even when the conclusion is different.
Now that is a good argument against evolution I would think, our feet have not changed over 1.5 million years.
DJM
Have you seen this video at Panda’s thumb?
video of Michael Schermer interviewing Georgia Purdom, at the creation museum
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1539247884380533350&hl=en
Although it deals a lot with Christian theology, I liked it because it was the most pleasant debate I have seen, both are most respectful.
(I junked a really long, wandering, weird post when I realized that there were only one or two people disagreeing with the dating)
DJM, actually, I can think of several possible counters to the ’spending all attention on one planet’ view. Here’s a few off the top of my head:
(1) He’s not. Presumably God could multitask, and handle business on a few billion worlds simultaneously.
(2) It’s part of a cunning plan God creates a universe that has intelligent life; intelligent life designs radio signals; intelligent life realizes real possible risk of alien contact and hides. This was foreseen, however, so he picked one planet to have a burning moral desire to fire up the radio telescopes and start metaphorically banging on doors and handing out Bibles to break the silence – even if the powers that be decide it’s too risky, you know some group will be worried about the souls of alien space bats around a distant star (and will probably have plenty of collaborators among the astronomers in sending an illicit message to open communications).
(3) We’re the first Intelligent life seems to be the result of a lot of lucky rolls of the dice coming up right. This is balanced by there being a hell of throws of the dice in the form of untold potential systems around G- and K- class stars, but we can’t determine how likely or unlikely we are just yet.
(4) We’re screwups A parent will spend a lot of time with a child with a terminal disease. In the material universe, humanity might live fast and die young, and God is watching intently during that brief time.
These are mostly my own immediate thoughts on being confronted with that argument. I think the Catholic hierarchy has mulled over the question as well, and probably has much better answers, and presumably other religious groups have, as well. They aren’t ignorant of the sheer scope and possibility of intelligent life elsewhere, and (rightly) don’t consider its presence or absence much of an argument either for or against God.
Fine. Let’s all believe instead an imaginary being lives in the sky controlling the events of our lives, killing planes loads of people for no apparent reason (and occasionally sparing a few here and there) and striking down children with the most horrible sicknesses so the parent can learn some spiritual lesson about the preciousness of life.
Face it, if there’s a god, he’s got one fucked up sense of right.
Instead, DJM, let us all worship ourselves, and and all too not-imaginary state, which is the embodiment of us. Let us make our moral decisions based upon what is good for us, what we feel to be right.
This has worked out so well in the 20th-21st Centuries, after all, where vast, atheist governments have killed far more than mere plane loads of people, children have been brainwashed, killed in abortions or in horrible genocides and government health care condemns the old, the sick and the “useless eaters” to be liquidated.
Let’s face it, when we turn away from our “imaginary friend” we humans don’t do so well.
The question of human suffering and pain is a deep, and very serious one, but you don’t solve it simply by rejecting G-d, or deciding He’s simply bad. For one thing, the latter rather unfairly absolves human beings of responsibility for their own evil acts. On 9/11 it was human beings who brought down two planes and killed thousands of people, not G-d, and they had a definite reason for doing so.
As for the spending all His time on one planet, this is the Almighty we’re talking about here; He’s certainly powerful to multitask, as Locarno points out.
I don’t really think the argument about intelligent life existing in the rest of the universe is useful at this point. All the arguments put forward in its favor are based on statistics; nothing wrong with that, but the fact is, we’ve yet to get definite radio signals, a provable visit from outer space (despite what the UFO enthusiasts say) or any other evidence that there is, indeed, intelligent life out there. Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. Some scientific thinking is coming around to the view that we really might be more special than we think; the book, “Rare Earth” takes this position. At this point, we really have no way of knowing if we’re the only intelligent species, or how many, if any, other intelligent species there are.
Until we do know, I think it’s kind’ve pointless to worry about it, or center our theology around them. Even if we do discover them, I think it would be stupid to jettison all our beliefs, just because they exist.
Yaza said: “Let’s face it, when we turn away from our “imaginary friend” we humans don’t do so well. “
Lol, we don’t do so well when we depend on our imaginary friend. Blaise Pascal said it best:
Personally, I sympathize with DJM’s perspective. (Don’t leave 2.0, DJM!)
It is impossible to disprove God’s existence. How can one prove that something does not exist? What troubles me, though, is that efforts to prove existence can take really weird turns–and that is what some of the anti-evolution biz is really about.
Oh, and as for the atheist-inspired bloodshed in the 20th century …
Let’s be clear that technology and modern organization facilitated this bloodshed. This is something that should be obvious enough when considering the activities of Muslims today. There was also a time when Christians would have been far more bloody than they were historically IF they had the means.
DJM, I’ve gotta disagree with Pascal. I think the 20th Century shows that men never do evil so cheerfully, or self-righteously, as when they do it for Utopia—a wonderful, brand new, Heaven on Earth, which will fulfill all mankind’s needs. Religious violence is horrible, but political violence appears to be even worse—-and the former does more damage when it becomes allied to the latter. I seriously doubt a lot of the princes who supported Luther, or some prominent Catholic potentate, during the Reformation, really gave a damn about Catholic or Protestant theology. They backed whoever they thought would give them the sweetest deal, or who had the most power to help them. And, as has been often pointed out, Islam is more of a political system than a religion.
Yes, technology and modern organization have facilitated bloodshed. And this brings me to some thorny questions:
This is the very same technology and organization we’re supposed to put our faith in, as opposed to imaginary friends, and religion. Yet, plainly, given modern history, it just isn’t enough to keep us from from cruelty and tyranny—in fact, it helps us in that. Many scientists in Nazi Germany were quite happy to do research in the concentration camps, as were many Soviet scientists in the Gulag.
So, maybe we need something more than just technology and modern organization to keep us on the level? But, if so, what? An athiest/materialist can’t admit there is anything more. So, what then? Do we simply resign ourselves to being ruled, and sometimes killed, by highly organized technocrats?
And can scientists be trusted? They’re human, like we are, they can make mistakes. Scientists fervently supported things such as eugenics and phrenology—-things which are now discredited. Okay, we’re all human, and if we see scientists as being just people like us, flawed and fallible, who don’t have all the answers, even though they’re looking for them, we shouldn’t go too far wrong. But scientists, and science, are becoming all too theological in the modern world, things that cannot be questioned, or debated. I don’t think this is good.
How can this be evidence for evolution, if, to start with, there hasn’t been enough time for evolution to happen, as Lord Kelvin clearly told Darwinites?
Yaza, I share your skepticism about scientists as persons. Not only that, what is considered “science” at one time may well be ridiculed at another. Your bigger point seems to be that if religion will not make us good, what will? And without religion, what could “good” even mean? How can one defend one’s version of the good without religion?
Here’s my personal view as a nonbeliever. I think that religions (and Satan-infused political cults like Islam) are an emergent property of the evolved human brain. Everywhere we look, we find human beings to be mostly believers. Even in so-called communist regimes, most people are secret believers. The commie honchos are believers as well, in communist religion. The zealotry of such honchos can’t be explained by the feeble “science” of their beliefs.
But I also suspect that our ideas of right and wrong are evolved as well. Despite what some have claimed, there are noteworthy similarities in all human social systems. In *all* of them (to my knowledge) there is a “right” and a “wrong” that is felt by nearly all. Even the worst scum will typically think himself just and decent. Why should he bother? Why is this so important for him?
Certain things are almost always thought “right.” It is thought right to obey laws in general. Killing others always requires a justification that draws on conceptions of what is right, even if those conceptions differ across societies. The same could be said for taking another’s property. I view religions as ways of systematizing what is already basically felt by participants.
Why does killing someone else require justification? Perhaps because we do not want to be killed ourselves. So, we create barriers to frivolous murder. The same could be said for property. Why is private property so valued? Maybe because we would like our own property secured. And why should we care about our lives and property? Perhaps because only beings who cared about such things would ever have survived evolutionary pressures. If we consider the lower animals, we repeatedly note how often they are “concerned” with protecting their OWN property as well–and their families and lives. They do not have Torah or the New Testament to guide them.
revparadigm, you might want to Google “radiometric dating.” The technique uses known half-lives of radioactive isotopes.
Radiometric dating doesn’t work.
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/dating2.html
That is why the present pseudo science of dating rocks & fossils by layer depth is passed off as truth. This earth isn’t billions of years old. The bible is the most accurate historical document on this planet.
Face it, if there’s a god, he’s got one fucked up sense of right.
It is amazing how people ignore the bible when it offers such a simple explanation for this issue of why this world is so messed up.
The bible declares God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. There is not some sick hidden side to God that like to deceive, torture people for the fun of it. Try Islam for doctrines like that, not the bible. Jesus plainly declared His will & God the Father on the throne in heaven, that He came to bring “zoe” life abundantly. That word in the Greek is a very interesting one, because its not talking about struggling just to survive or a lowly existence. It means life so abundant and full, as God Himself experiences.
God gave man was given dominion on this planet for a allotted period of time. Man sinned and humanity fell into chaos, death & destruction. The whole reason why God makes covenants with men is to legally gain access back into the earth before this allotted time of stewardship expires, because God will not violate His own word He established with humanity. Scripture declares plainly how God still loved humanity even in it’s fallen state and saw them being worthy of redemption, even though we didn’t deserve it for how bad humans have screwed up. the only battle going on between good and evil is for the hearts of men until this time expires. If you want to know what happens when it does expire, read Revelation chapter 19. Jesus returns, kicks some serious butt on all the evil here on the earth and takes over, setting the whole place straight like it should be.
sk, respectfully, as an amateur historian, I can’t agree with your theory that our ideas of right and wrong have evolved. We seem to be pretty much the same, ornery, greedy, lazy, lusty folk we were back in the bronze age. We just have bigger and better toys now, to indulge ourselves with.
And ethics, based on evolution, will take you only so far. Actually, they won’t take you very far at all. This ethics of Darwinism, if you can call them that, is that the weak go to the wall, and the fit and strong survive. In this world view, there really isn’t any such thing as morality, only dinner and diners, winners and losers.
Being nice to my neighbor: not killing him, stealing from him or harming him because he might do the same to me, doesn’t work in the long run. Sooner or later, the opportunity to do so, and get away with it, whether my neighbor is the near-by community which has some sheep my people would like to eat, or he’s an old man, no family, lots of gold buried in his back yard, is going to present itself. If one can get away with it, why not do it? That old man’s a useless eater, he’s a drain on the community, he should share his wealth with me. That near-by community is greedy, they won’t share their sheep with us, they deserve whatever they get. Okay, maybe the old man has a powerful friend who will go after you, if you kill him and take his gold. Maybe the sheep people have an alliance with a powerful city, who will kill you and yours if you attack them. In that case, refraining from harming either one, is practicality, not morality. And, if they can’t defend themselves, aren’t you being a fool for not taking the gold, or the sheep?
You can call on the law, but the law, if it doesn’t recognize something higher than itself, is just the whim of the powerful, and can’t be relied on. If you kill your neighbor and take his gold, maybe the local big boss man will punish, not only you, but your completely innocent relatives. Or maybe he’ll just laugh and praise your cunning, because who cares about some old miser anyway? Just give boss man some of that gold, and all will be well.
I admire unbelievers who actually try to come up with some grounds for moral behavior, rather than shrugging the issue off entirely, but I’ve yet to hear one that I think would work. And, given the track record of the modern monster atheist (or pagan) totalitarian states, I think we’re right to at least question.
Self-concern, in the long run, isn’t a good thing to base morality on. It might prevent you from harming some people—-the ones who are also concerned with themselves, and have the power to protect themselves from you—but it could lead you to being cruel to those who can’t protect themselves against you. After all, if they’re weak, self-concern, self-preservation will convince you that you should help yourself to what’s theirs.
And, of course, there are always the completely insane among us, such as homicide bombers, whose concept of self-concern is utterly different from ours.
revparadigm, I reviewed, very quickly, that link of yours, and the “part 1″ as well. I think you make some very serious errors. The most serious is that you seem to suppose that weakening one explanation (assuming for the moment that you have done so) thereby strengthens another. It does not. You must instead develop an alternative explanation and defend it with the same kind of methodology that you used to weaken the other. This is the most serious shortcoming of ID/Creationism: it has little or no positive research agenda. Thus, your claim that “The bible is the most accurate historical document on this planet.” just can’t be taken seriously.
The next issue is your source. This fellow is not expert in the area that he is writing about. And, there is no evidence that this present work has been subject to any peer review process involving such experts. Academics publish or perish. They are subject to the “evolutionary” process of academia, and no full professor (your source) is unaware of this. Why then is this work merely on a web site?
Next, so far as I could see, nothing there sustains your claim that dating technologies could consistently (as opposed to randomly, with some variance) not distinguish between an artifact that is 2 million years old and one that is 10,000 years old.
DJM, I’m sorry if what I said somehow came across as insensitive, I simply wished to point out that a full understanding of the expansiveness of the universe does not really argue against (or for, of course) the presence of a god. Also, your characterization of the deity as a constant intercessor is a grossly distorted strawman.
Revparadigm, strict radioisotope dating comparing parent element isotopes does generate reliable and consistent numbers… just not far enough back for the geologists’ needs… but further back than accountable by young-earth creationism.
Three random thoughts:
I think one of the things we as Americans have to face up to is that our system of government, as formed by the Founders, PRESUPPOSES a transcendent referrent, a providential Order, a Creator. Take that foundation away, and it falls to pieces. Take that away gradually, and it falls to pieces gradually, as indeed it HAS over the last century.
Just a couple of the big problems:
RIGHTS—– Are they endowed by an Order greater than society? If not, they are determined by society, IOW, the State. They can be created and abrogated at will.
AUTHORITY depends on a transcendent referrent, whether custom, tradition, ancestors, or religion. It should go without saying that the first three (regrettably) have little standing in the modern age. But rule-by-law depends on reverence for the authority of Law. If you don’t like AUTHORITY, bend over for POWER.
These problems, BTW, have NOTHING to do with “blaming” atheists, agnostics, and secularists; nor with patting believers on the back. Our personal beliefs (I should hope!) are not based on what we might think is socially or politically useful.
Yaza, you make good points. And yet, I think you omit some important consideration.
You say “I can’t agree with your theory that our ideas of right and wrong have evolved. We seem to be pretty much the same, ornery, greedy, lazy, lusty folk we were back in the bronze age. We just have bigger and better toys now, to indulge ourselves with.”
Nicely put. Consider, though, the famous book Lord of the Flies. For me, its take home message is that social systems count. We have all the attributes that allowed us to destroy our closest evolutionary relatives, leaving chimps and gorillas, who are no possible threat to us, in the forest. We have brains that are just too big and complex, except as weapons to kill off human competitors and have successful offspring. However, to achieve such goals, we need to contrive social systems and cultural systems that work. If we do not, we die off and hostile neighboring tribes seize our possessions (and our women). Systems have consequences, though. They enforce certain behaviors and norms.
“And ethics, based on evolution, will take you only so far. Actually, they won’t take you very far at all. This ethics of Darwinism, if you can call them that, is that the weak go to the wall, and the fit and strong survive. In this world view, there really isn’t any such thing as morality, only dinner and diners, winners and losers.
Ah, but you are thinking of so-called Social Darwinism, which is pretty lousy positive (descriptive) theory. I assume you like capitalism, right? In many ways capitalism is a nice economic analogy to evolution, though its processes happen very much faster. This economic system is based on selfishness. No wonder it can work with us selfish human beings (and no wonder that socialism/communism runs intro problems so quickly). But the systemic output of capitalism is far nicer than the individual motives of the entrepreneur.
Don’t get me wrong. Cultural systems (like religions) count as well. They may originate as ways to reconcile differences and give meaning to what is around us, but some play better with others. I’d much rather live in a country full of Christians than in one full of Muslims. For all I know, Christianity might facilitate capitalism (Weber sure thought so, regarding Protestantism). My point is just that I don’t personally feel the need for an external basis for my morality. If others do have such a basis, terrific, just so long as that basis doesn’t make me a dhimmi.
My tuppence worth.
Religion won’t make us good. True. BUT being good eventually leads us to a religious view of God.We don’t get to heaven based on our ‘good’ acts. We make it through God given grace. Just get control of your ego, and don’t chuck it back in God’s face when it’s offered. One can’t NOT PROVE God’s reality. As a human being i believe this. All one has in the end is Faith. I know it’s a tough call but God never said it’d be easy either!
As a physicist i believe in the processes of geology and evolution with a few quibbles. The existing controversial bits I leave in my…. ‘open mind backpack’…. that i carry around. I do however revel in the underlying beauty and implied simplicity underpinning the apparent complexity of the physical universe. I am a creationist at heart. i just take a longer 13.7 billion year perspective and rejoice in its wonder, mystery and magnificent depth. restricting oneself to just a 6000 year perspective is not taking advantage of a great God given gift. Rejoice in the wonder of ALL of God’s creation. Try it . You’ll like it!
SK—— Whether you yourself (or any given individual) might need an “external” source of morality or not is one thing. Whether societies, and especially consitutional ones, need a transcendent referrent is another.
My own opinion is that our particular system of government, which enshrines ordered liberty and rule-by-law, cannot survive the decline of the “external” values on which it was based. That is my fear. I would LIKE to believe otherwise, but cannot.
Aussie Infidel
Have you read Genesis and the Big Bang by Gerald Schroeder? He utilizes the Theory of Relativity and proves the 13 billion year age of earth. In our frame of reference only six days passed where as in actual time as the universe was expanding, billions of years passed. The six thousand year ago is the starting point of our time frame reference when man was created by virtue of God breathing into him the spirit of life and man became a living spirit himself.
Here is the link where I found the following. It is part of the test of Gerald Schroeder’s book The Science of God.
The creation of time.
Each day of creation is numbered. Yet there is discontinuity in the way the days are numbered. The verse says: “There is evening and morning, Day One.” But the second day doesn’t say “evening and morning, Day Two.” Rather, it says “evening and morning, a second day.” And the Torah continues with this pattern: “Evening and morning, a third day… a fourth day… a fifth day… the sixth day.” Only on the first day does the text use a different form: not “first day,” but “Day One” (”Yom Echad”). Many English translations that make the mistake of writing “a first day.” That’s because editors want things to be nice and consistent. But they throw out the cosmic message in the text! Because there is a qualitative difference, as Nachmanides says, between “one” and “first.” One is absolute; first is comparative.
Nachmanides explains that on Day One, time was created. That’s a phenomenal insight. Time was created. I can understand creating matter, even space. But time? How do you create time? You can’t grab time. You don’t even see it. You can see space, you can see matter, you can feel energy, you can see light energy. I understand a creation there. But the creation of time? Eight hundred years ago, Nachmanides attained this insight from the Torah’s use of the phrase, “Day One.” And that’s exactly what Einstein taught us in the Laws of Relativity: hat there was a creation, not just of space and matter, but of time itself.
Einstein’s Law of Relativity.
We look at the universe, and say, “How old is the universe? Looking back in time, the universe is about 15 billion years old.” That’s our view of time. But what is the Bible’s view of time? How does it see time? Maybe it sees time differently. And that makes a big difference. Albert Einstein taught us that Big Bang cosmology brings not just space and matter into existence, but that time is part of the nitty gritty. Time is a dimension. Time is affected by your view of time. How you see time depends on where you’re viewing it. A minute on the moon goes faster than a minute on the Earth. A minute on the sun goes slower. Time on the sun is actually stretched out so that if you could put a clock on the sun, it would tick more slowly. It’s a small difference, but it’s measurable and measured. If you could ripen oranges on the Sun, they would take longer to ripen. Why? Because time goes more slowly. Would you feel it going more slowly? No, because your biology would be part of the system. If you were living on the Sun, your heart would beat more slowly. Wherever you are, your biology is in synch with the local time.
If you could look from one system to another, you would see time very differently. Because depending on factors like gravity and velocity, you will perceive time in a way that is very different. Here’s an example: One evening we were sitting around the dinner table, and my 11-year-old daughter asked, “How you could have dinosaurs? How you could have billions of years scientifically – and thousands of years Biblically at the same time? So I told her to imagine a planet where time is so stretched out that while we live out two years on Earth, only three minutes will go by on that planet. Now, those places actually exist, they are observed. It would be hard to live there with their conditions, and you couldn’t get to them either, but in mental experiments you can do it. Two years are going to go by on Earth, three minutes are going to go by on the planet. So my daughter says, “Great! Send me to the planet. I’ll spend three minutes there. I’ll do two years worth of homework. I’ll come back home, no homework for two years.” Nice try. Assuming she was age 11 when she left, and her friends were 11. She spends three minutes on the planet and then comes home. (The travel time takes no time.) How old is she when she gets back? Eleven years and 3 minutes. And her friends are 13. Because she lived out 3 minutes while we lived out 2 years. Her friends aged from 11 years to 13 years, while she’s 11 years and 3 minutes.
Had she looked down on Earth from that planet, her perception of Earth time would be that everybody was moving very quickly. Whereas if we looked up, she’d be moving very slowly. Which is correct? Is it three years? Or three minutes? The answer is both. They’re both happening at the same time. That’s the legacy of Albert Einstein. It so happens there literally billions of locations in the universe, where if you could put a clock at that location, it would tick so slowly, that from our perspective (if we could last that long) 15 billion years would go by… but the clock at that remote location would tick out six days. Nobody disputes this data.
Time travel and the Big Bang.
But how does this help to explain the Bible? Because anyway the Talmud and commentators seem to say that Six Days of Genesis were regular 24-hour periods! Let’s look a bit deeper. The classical Jewish sources say that before the beginning, we don’t really know what there is. We can’t tell what predates the universe. The Midrash asks the question: Why does the Bible begin with the letter Bet? Because Bet (which is written like a backwards C) is closed in all directions and only open in the forward direction. Hence we can’t know what comes before – only after. The first letter is a Bet – closed in all directions and only open in the forward direction.
Nachmanides the Kabbalist expands the statement. He says that although the days are 24 hours each, they contain “kol yemot ha-olam” – all the ages and all the secrets of the world. Nachmanides says that before the universe, there was nothing… but then suddenly the entire creation appeared as a minuscule speck. He gives a dimension for the speck: something very tiny like the size of a grain of mustard. And he says that is the only physical creation. There was no other physical creation; all other creations were spiritual. The Nefesh (the soul of animal life) and the Neshama (the soul of human life) are spiritual creations. There’s only one physical creation, and that creation was a tiny speck. The speck is all there was. Anything else was G-d. In that speck was all the raw material that would be used for making everything else. Nachmanides describes the substance as “dak me’od, ein bo mamash” – very thin, no substance to it. And as this speck expanded out, this substance – so thin that it has no essence – turned into matter as we know it.
Nachmanides further writes: “Misheyesh, yitfos bo zman” – from the moment that matter formed from this substance-less substance, time grabs hold. Not “begins.” Time is created at the beginning. But time “grabs hold.” When matter condenses, congeals, coalesces, out of this substance so thin it has no essence – that’s when the Biblical clock starts.
Science has shown that there’s only one “substanceless substance” that can change into matter. And that’s energy. Einstein’s famous equation, E=MC2, tells us that energy can change into matter. And once it changes into matter, time grabs hold. Nachmanides has made a phenomenal statement. I don’t know if he knew the Laws of Relativity. But we know them now. We know that energy – light beams, radio waves, gamma rays, x-rays – all travel at the speed of light, 300 million meters per second. At the speed of light, time does not pass. The universe was aging, but time only grabs hold when matter is present. This moment of time before the clock begins for the Bible, lasted about 1/100,000 of a second. A miniscule time. But in that time, the universe expanded from a tiny speck, to about the size of the Solar System. From that moment on we have matter, and time flows forward. The clock begins here.
Now the fact that the Bible tells us there is “evening and morning Day One”, comes to teach us time from a Biblical perspective. Einstein proved that time varies from place to place in the universe, and that time varies from perspective to perspective in the universe. The Bible says there is “evening and morning Day One”.
Now if the Torah were seeing time from the days of Moses and Mount Sinai – long after Adam – the text would not have written Day One. Because by Sinai, millions of days already passed. And since there was a lot of time with which to compare Day One, it would have said “A First Day.” By the second day of Genesis, the Bible says “a second day,” because there was already the First Day with which to compare it. You could say on the second day, “what happened on the first day.” But you could not say on the first day, “what happened on the first day” because “first” implies comparison – an existing series. And there was no existing series. Day One was all there was.
Even if the Torah was seeing time from Adam, the text would have said “a first day”, because by its own statement there are six days. The Torah says “Day One” because the Torah is looking forward from the beginning. And it says, how old is the universe? Six Days. We’ll just take time up until Adam. Six Days. We look back in time, and say the universe is 15 billion years old. But every scientist knows, that when we say the universe is 15 billion years old, there’s another half of the sentence that we never say. The other half of the sentence is: The universe is 15 billion years old as seen from the time-space coordinates that we exist in. That’s Einstein’s view of relativity.
The key is that the Torah looks forward in time, from very different time-space coordinates, when the universe was small. But since then, the universe has expanded out. Space stretches, and that stretching of space totally changes the perception of time. Imagine in your mind going back billions of years ago to the beginning of time. Now pretend way back at the beginning of time, when time grabs hold, there’s an intelligent community. (It’s totally fictitious.) Imagine that the intelligent community has a laser, and it’s going to shoot out a blast of light, and every second it’s going to pulse. Every second — pulse. Pulse. Pulse. It shoots the light out, and then billions of years later, way far down the time line, we here on Earth have a big satellite dish, and we receive that pulse of light. And on that pulse of light is imprinted (printing information on light is called fiber optics – sending information by light), “I’m sending you a pulse every second.” And then a second goes by and the next pulse is sent.
Now light travels 300 million meters per second. So the two light pulses are separated by 300 million meters at the beginning. Now they travel through space for billions of years, and they’re going to reach the Earth billions of years later. But wait a minute. Is the universe static? No. The universe is expanding. That’s the cosmology of the universe. And that mean it’s expanding into an empty space outside the universe. There’s only the universe. There is no space outside the universe. The universe expands by space stretching. So as these pulses go through billions of years of travelling, and the universe is stretching, and space is stretching, what’s happening to these pulses? The space between them is also stretching. So the pulses really get further and further apart. Billions of years later, when the first pulse arrives, we say, “Wow – a pulse!” And written on it is “I’m sending you a pulse every second.” You call all your friends, and you wait for the next pulse to arrive. Does it arrive another second later? No! A year later? Maybe not. Maybe billions of years later. Because depending on how much time this pulse of light has traveled through space, will determine the amount of stretching that has occurred. That’s standard cosmology.
15 billion or six days?
Today, we look at time going backward. We see 15 billion years. Looking forward from when the universe is very small – billions of times smaller – the Torah says six days. In truth, they both may be correct. What’s exciting about the last few years in cosmology is we now have quantified the data to know the relationship of the “view of time” from the beginning, relative to the “view of time” today. It’s not science fiction any longer. Any one of a dozen physics text books all bring the same number. The general relationship between time near the beginning and time today is a million million. That’s a 1 with 12 zeros after it. So when a view from the beginning looking forward says “I’m sending you a pulse every second,” would we see it every second? No. We’d see it every million million seconds. Because that’s the stretching effect of the expansion of the universe.
The Torah doesn’t say every second, does it? It says Six Days. How would we see those six days? If the Torah says we’re sending information for six days, would we receive that information as six days? No. We would receive that information as six million million days. Because the Torah’s perspective is from the beginning looking forward. Six million million days is a very interesting number. What would that be in years? Divide by 365 and it comes out to be 16 billion years. Essentially the estimate of the age of the universe. Not a bad guess for 3000 years ago.
The way these two figures match up is extraordinary. I’m not speaking as a theologian; I’m making a scientific claim. I didn’t pull these numbers out of hat. That’s why I led up to the explanation very slowly, so you can follow it step-by-step. Now we can go one step further. Let’s look at the development of time, day-by-day, based on the expansion factor. Every time the universe doubles, the perception of time is cut in half. Now when the universe was small, it was doubling very rapidly. But as the universe gets bigger, the doubling time gets exponentially longer. This rate of expansion is quoted in “The Principles of Physical Cosmology,” a textbook that is used literally around the world.
(In case you want to know, this exponential rate of expansion has a specific number averaged at 10 to the 12th power. That is in fact the temperature of quark confinement, when matter freezes out of the energy: 10.9 times 10 to the 12th power Kelvin degrees divided by (or the ratio to) the temperature of the universe today, 2.73 degrees. That’s the initial ratio which changes exponentially as the universe expands.)
The calculations come out to be as follows:
* The first of the Biblical days lasted 24 hours, viewed from the “beginning of time perspective.” But the duration from our perspective was 8 billion years.
* The second day, from the Bible’s perspective lasted 24 hours. From our perspective it lasted half of the previous day, 4 billion years.
* The third day also lasted half of the previous day, 2 billion years.
* The fourth day – one billion years.
* The fifth day – one-half billion years.
* The sixth day – one-quarter billion years.
When you add up the Six Days, you get the age of the universe at 15 and 3/4 billion years. The same as modern cosmology. Is it by chance?
But there’s more. The Bible goes out on a limb and tells you what happened on each of those days. Now you can take cosmology, paleontology, archaeology, and look at the history of the world, and see whether or not they match up day-by-day. And I’ll give you a hint. They match up close enough to send chills up your spine.
revparadigm, I reviewed, very quickly, that link of yours, and the “part 1″ as well. I think you make some very serious errors. The most serious is that you seem to suppose that weakening one explanation (assuming for the moment that you have done so) thereby strengthens another. It does not. You must instead develop an alternative explanation and defend it with the same kind of methodology that you used to weaken the other. This is the most serious shortcoming of ID/Creationism: it has little or no positive research agenda. Thus, your claim that “The bible is the most accurate historical document on this planet.” just can’t be taken seriously..
You said a bunch of absolutely nothing there except “I don’t believe what you said, therefore it is flawed”. You didn’t even provide one single specific point to counter my “methodology”. This is typical of the whole issue. Any archeology dealing with established civilizations, 100% backs the bible’s time frame concerning how long humans have been here on earth. The only way old earth idealists can pull hundred of thousands of human existence and such is through these flawed dating methods.
The next issue is your source. This fellow is not expert in the area that he is writing about. And, there is no evidence that this present work has been subject to any peer review process involving such experts.
Ahh yes the experts angle. “Experts” according to which school of thought? See this the silly roadblock put up by evolutionists all the time. Somebody who interprets data different than us means they are not “qualified”. Pure nonsense. All the “peers” must first prescribe to our theories, otherwise we will tear them down without specific before any of their data is openly examined.
Anastasia, you might be right that liberty, the rule of law, and other such things require an external source of morality. I guess my point is that most of us will tend to find such a source somewhere. You can call it Christianity. Others will call it Judaism. I might speculate on evolutionary processes. That we tend to find a need for such external sources is interesting in itself.
What I think is dangerous is to say that because one has no official external source, one cannot make moral judgments. This is what the leftist relativists do. I admit I am a bit of an oddball here, but I have no problem saying that even if a bunch of Muslims think I should be a dhimmi, I think I should not be, and I have no interest in being one, and I have every interest in seeing no Muslims in my country if I believe that they would impose dhimmitude on me.
In other words, I don’t need God behind me to tell some fanatical scumbag to get out of my country. I can accept the dominant values of my society and work to keep them dominant. I can do this because I like the result. Why should I pander to someone else’s set of values? If we review the Wilders’ speech, this is basically what he is saying. Netherlands has developed a particular set of values. The vast majority of Netherlanders like these values, and they have every right to preserve them against invaders.
revparadigm, please reread my comment to you more carefully.
You say, “You said a bunch of absolutely nothing there except “I don’t believe what you said, therefore it is flawed”.
Evidently you did not understand what I said, which is not the same as my not having said anything. What I said, this time more plainly, is that you do not understand how to test a theory. One does not prove Theory B (Bible as best history book) simply by showing weaknesses in Theory A (e.g., evolution, radiometric dating). Now, I can dust off my old philosophy of science material and put this in Popperian language of falsifiability, blah, blah, blah. Your Theory B has simply been asserted based on your challenge to one speck of Theory A.
“Any archeology dealing with established civilizations, 100% backs the bible’s time frame concerning how long humans have been here on earth.”
Huh? Also, see my last point.
Ahh yes the experts angle. “Experts” according to which school of thought? See this the silly roadblock put up by evolutionists all the time. Somebody who interprets data different than us means they are not “qualified”. Pure nonsense.
We have a division of labor in society. There are existing bodies of knowledge and communities that develop this knowledge. However imperfect such communities are, we as secondhand consumers cannot simply dismiss such communities without dismissing just about every piece of knowledge that humanity has acquired. This professor of computer science makes claims about certain technologies. He may or may not have valid points. However, he provides no evidence that he has subjected these points to any external adjudication. As an academic, he would surely look askance at some professor from the English department dismissing his own scholarship, even if this English prof was bold enough to post his ruminations on his own web page. If someone can build a better mousetrap, people will come to him. If this computer science professor can demolish dating methodologies, he can start a nice schism in the academy, make a really big name for himself, and get lots of graduate students and publications.
Finally, I notice that you managed to omit my third of three points. This point wasn’t abstract at all–anyone should be able to understand it. I wrote:
nothing there sustains your claim that dating technologies could consistently (as opposed to randomly, with some variance) not distinguish between an artifact that is 2 million years old and one that is 10,000 years old.
In other words, even if current dating methods are inaccurate, your source does not establish that they are inaccurate enough to sustain your anti-evolution message.
In other words, even if current dating methods are inaccurate, your source does not establish that they are inaccurate enough to sustain your anti-evolution message.
Being “anti” has nothing to do with it. You are more concerned about discrediting sources than the actual data they present. Same old shoot the messenger to stop the message. This is what evolutionists are so scared of. People simply challenging the assumptions.
revparadigm said…
That is why the present pseudo science of dating rocks & fossils by layer depth is passed off as truth. This earth isn’t billions of years old. The bible is the most accurate historical document on this planet.
“The bible is the most accurate historical document on this planet”? Now that’s some funny shit right there!
I’m with DJM, and his Blaise Pascal quote. on this one.
sk, I like capitalism just fine—as long as it stays in the economic sphere, and people don’t try to apply its principals to the non-economic parts of life, such as love, children, the family, religion, friendship, and all the rest of it. I used to live in the OC, Orange County California, among the rich and tasteless, and I’ve seem what 24/7 capitalism can do, and it’s not pretty. And I’m reading a very funny book right now called “Pretending you Care” about working in retail, and it brings back my own memories of retail work, and. . . capitalism is a great economic system, but, like everything else, it’s flawed, has problems, and you can’t live your entire life by it.
I feel the same way about a moral system based on evolution, for the reasons I went into, probably way too tediously, in my previous posts. Also, to be honest, I simply don’t see societies, in general, “evolving” towards any greater morality. The Aztecs, for instance, evolved into a completely nutzoid, murderous society that slaughtered neighboring tribes in order to sacrifice them to their sun god. Yes, they were brought down by the conquistadors, but how many lives, and how many cultures, did they destroy before this happened?
I don’t buy into Islam at all, by the way; I’m arguing religion from the traditional Judeo-Christian point of view, so I’m with you 100% on resisting it, and not being a dhimmi.
Like Anastasia, I’m dubious that our society as a whole can survive without basing it’s law and constitution on some transcendant power. If men are not endowed by their creator with inalienable rights, it’s to be the state then, by default, to give them rights—or withhold them, and that’s going to depend on how beneficent or tolerant our leaders are. This is not a gamble I think we take. We’ve seen how states can murder vast numbers of their own citizens in the 20th Century, we can’t say we don’t know what will happen.
I’m also dubious as to how long a purely secular, materialistic society can withstand a determined, spiritually voracious one. Right now, I’m watching, quite sadly, the dissolution of my in-law family. The mother was a staunch liberal, progressive, atheist, and raised her kids that way. They’re not doing well. She, herself, is a very good woman, but she simply wasn’t able to pass her own morality on to her kids and grandkids. Yes, I know a lot of individuals feel they don’t need a higher power to be good, but unbelievers, as a group, even when they themselves are moral people, don’t seem able to pass much morality onto anyone else.
Yeah mocking it is even funnier! Just more arrogance of the blind who laugh at the bible these days.
“Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.”
2nd Peter 3:3-7
“The bible is the most accurate historical document on this planet”? Now that’s some funny shit right there!”
Maybe 2.0 isn’t so different than 1.0 when it comes to Creationism and such.
Respectful disagreement is one thing, but I thought I left this behind in the Lizard Kingdom.
revparadigm said…
Respectful disagreement is one thing, but I thought I left this behind in the Lizard Kingdom.
Oh, puhleeze, don’t get your panties in a twist. You made the ridiculous statements, “The bible is the most accurate historical document on this planet,” and “That is why the present pseudo science of dating rocks & fossils by layer depth is passed off as truth. This earth isn’t billions of years old.”
Someone’s feeling a little dogmatic today, eh? How should I have ‘respectfully disagreed’ with such dogma as you espouse? Kneel and pray? I’m not religous, never claimed to be, as I’ve said here before. What you wrote is ludicous beyond all cognitive dissonence and, yes, science. The Bible is not a science book and for you to elevate it to that status is, well, some funny shit right there. Even the nuns I had for 12 years of Catholic schooling never tried to pass the Bible off as a science textbook. If someone disagreeing with that point of view of yours is disrespectful by making fun of it, go join a mosque. Your dogmatic beliefs would fit right in, as well as your interpretation of ‘respect’. But you knew that already, didn’t you?
BTW, in your science world, just how old is the universe/earth? The great Neanderthal/Homo Sapiens War (not really a war as we know it, but those two species were in competition for the same food sources during the Ice Age, and both could not survive) ended around 30,000 years ago. Dinasaurs weren’t around millions of years ago, either, right? Because “the most accurate historical document on this planet” makes no mention of dinosaurs, right? And you think I shouldn’t laugh at such beliefs? You sound mighty thin-skinned, and overly dogmatic, to me. Truthfully, the myths of ancient Greece hold just as much weight as the Bible when it comes to science, if not more so (the old Natural Law versus God’s Law paradigm debate). Greeks were the first archeologists, discovering many large animal bones (yes, the Greeks could recognize bones), many taller than the men who found them. The Greeks couldn’t explain the large fossil bones, except in myths about giants, like the cyclops, but they knew about them. Never forget one on my heroes, Heron of Alexander. Check out his coin-operated holy water dispenser (the first coin-operated vending machine). Not very far in concept from the selling of indulgences a thousand years later. Money makes god, hence religion, go round. It has always been this way, it’s our human nature. It’s also in our human nature to lie to ourselves to make ourselves feel better, as you’ve proven with the anti-science beliefs you hold since true science is in conflict with your beliefs. So, for you, ‘let’s shoot the messanger, as well as the message’. You also seem to believe that ‘mockery will not be tolerated’. Lots of intolerance there, if you ask me, which you didn’t, but I felt compelled to state anyway.
Song and Dance Man
I can’t follow your line of reasoning with your …. ‘In our frame of reference only six days passed where as in actual time as the universe was expanding, billions of years passed. The six thousand year ago is the starting point of our time frame reference when man was created by virtue of God breathing into him the spirit of life and man became a living spirit himself.’
Are you implying that the frame of reference on Earth stretching 6 days is somehow equivalent to a little less than 13.7 billion years? That is a little too much of a stretch scientifically I’m afraid. WE are able to actually see almost to the point where matter ‘froze out’ of the underlying energy. Once the ‘son of Hubble’ takes flight we will see that far off point or a point where recession equals the velocity of light beyond which it is censored from our view. By the bye it’s not that matter is increasing in velocity the farther out we peer, it’s actually the velocity of expanding space time that appears to be accelerating.
If you mean that around 4004BC man had a soul breathed into him, I’d like to see the evidence. I will remind you that I have held in my hands Australian aborigine bones 30,000 years old and they are identical to present day Australian aborigines’ skeletal bones. In fact the first Australian aborigines crossed from Timor paddling across the 60 Km (then) Timor gap ( a very deep trench that was always water covered even in the very depths of Ice Ages)to land in Australia around 55,000-60,000 years ago. Are you saying that they didn’t have immortal souls for say 50,000 years and having a soul is only a reasonably recent innovation? Evidence please!
S&DM Your …. ‘That’s a phenomenal insight. Time was created. I can understand creating matter, even space. But time?’
How come you have this problem differentiating time from the three spatial dimensions? Actually to discuss spatiality is very misleading and to get a proper handle on reality one must think in terms of ‘space-time’. And please don’t forget that time does not run at the same rate everywhere. Was that what you were alluding to? I’m not much of a fan of ‘String Theory’ mainly because it lacks beauty. Whenever we humans stumble over a truth the think that stuns us is that it is always so perfectly beautiful. String Theory certainly ‘a’int that animal’!!! Even ‘Spinitor Theory’ to which I’m more partial is like trying to make ‘a silk purse out of a sow’s ear’ although one can get brief glimpses of a wee bit of underlying beauty peeking through.
You seem to be trying your level best to use science to prove a religiously inspired point about relative time. This is always .. not a good idea…. Time as you correctly point out is affected relatively by relative differential velocity approaching the speed of light as stated in Special Relativity and the twin paradox. Time dilation is also caused by gravity wells such as black holes. To take your line of thinking to its scientific conclusion one would have to be VERY close to a Schwarzschild Sphere, or Event Horizon to get that degree of time dilation. Gravitational tidal effects would rip one apart as one’s feet would have to be closer to the black hole than one’s head and tidally gravity would rend one asunder. Last time I looked my feet didn’t seem more gravitationally collapsed than my head. Please accept that the alluded passage of time in Genesis is a representation of the actual ages of the real universe and sequentially not a bad approximation. Please don’t try to use Earth Days as a definitive measure as Earth Days have undergone quite a range of change over the aeons and are changing still as we type this. Be glad that when Genesis was written it was enough for the time that it was written. God has given us the ability to understand and appreciate His creation by using our God given intelligence (perhaps even through evolution) to discover the beauty He has laid out for us.
Please don’t even attempt to squash God’s magnificent Creation into a tiny box of limited appreciation. Use God’s gift of intelligence to slowly uncover His deep and beautiful Creation in ALL its splendor and beauty. It is so beautiful and wonderful of only one looks up and sees.
Please no more attempts at ’situating the appreciation’ (deciding on an outcome and manipulating facts to fit) That led the good Bishop Crammer ( from memory I think?) (Possibly sometime in the 1600s?) to figure that the ‘world was created’ at the centre of creation at 4:30PM on 4th. October 4004 BC or some other nonsense. Use your God given intelligence to see the magnificence all around you and revel in the massive and perfect wonder of it all. It’s so much more satisfying and I’m sure makes God smile as we use the gifts He gave us to probe and discover His magnificent Creation.
Hiya Rick Z
I see that you suffered under the nuns too mate! Actually they were pretty good to me when i was a wee chap. Sister Salene taught us to play rugby at the tender age of 7! She’s hitch up her habit and plunge into the practice shouting coaching instructions! LOL
The Marists however were a different kettle of fish and tried the’ oldie but goodie’ of attempting to ‘beat knowledge into us!’ hehehe It didn’t work but we survived and learned anyway! Did you ever formulate oil of lilies in the lab as an emollient for rubbing into one’s hands when being canned? It seemed to work but may have been all in our minds! Or violin rosin to make the cane slip off the fingers?
In the end we still learned all 72 of us in class! Yup. 72 guys in one class so i guess in hindsight that the cane was the only way to keep us all in line. The guy who never got better than 5th. in class ended up as Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Sydney and the first two in class had IQs in the 160-170 range. All of the top 13 in class had IQs over 140. I never did get better than 28th. in class ‘with a following wind!’
Aussie Infidel,
Yes, I am a produuct of Catholic schooling. And, yes, getting smacked by the nuns was de rigueur. In fact, and people don’t really believe me when I say this, parents had to sign a letter that their child was NOT to be corporally punished if they acted up; it was a given that we were there to be disciplined. (I’ve always been a fan of George Carlin’s name for his grade school, Our Lady of Great Agony. We had nuns of poverty, The Immaculate Heart of Mary [IHM] order, so they had nothing to lose!) I remember in second grade, when we were practicing for First Communion, I was caught by Sr. Joseph (up in the choir balcony) talking with a a kid next to me. Next thing I know, I’m being dragged out of the Church (about 30+ rows of pews in length) by my ear! I still maintain that I have satellite dishes for ears because of that ‘trauma’. I also remember a 7th Grade field trip (about 4 hours one way) the nuns took us on to the Smithsonian Institution, to the, ahem, Science wing.
In high school, we didn’t have classes, but rather a day of 20 minute mods. We had to schedule our different groups (math group, English Lit group, etc.), as well as schedule our groups with the teacher. Learned pretty fast that getting on the teacher’s schedule was the priority. I also drank Canadian Club out of a thermos, mixing it with that dispensed cup of syrup and seltzer crap, while playing chess in the cafeteria junior and senior year. I guess I was a fan of the Alekhine school of inebriated chess. Got good at drinking, and got pretty good at chess, too (won a second place trophy citywide in high school, only losing to the guy I beat in the last game [we both ended up with 7-1 records, but the Swiss System gave him the points over me, as I lost my first game]). My older @sshole of a brother (by 13 years) taught me to play chess. When I beat him at the age of around 10, he quit playing me. My game has since deteriorated, and I don’t get to play too much anymore, but I still enjoy studying/playing out some of the great games. And whatever his faults today, and there are a plethora of faults, Bobby Fischer was a true chess genius.
Nuns hitting us ‘poor innocents’ (yeah, right) with yardsticks, pointers, rulers and hands. Good times, Aussie Infidel, good times. {Wipes away a tear of nostalgia}
Aussie,
Bishop Cranmer! Haven’t heard that name in a while (since strudying English History in college). But then, he was a Protestant heathen, executed by Bloody Mary. He wasn’t given a lot of press in my schooling. Don’t know why! ? !
And there was this guy from my grade school, five years ahead of me, I think, who is now a distinguished professor of Political Science at UVA, Dr. Larry Sabato. I’ve seen him doing that two minute ’soundbite’ interview on most of the alphabet news shows. A really smart guy. Just wish some it had rubbed off on me.
Not related to Catholic schooling, but one of my History professors in college is always cropping up on Civil War documentaries/tv shows, Dr. James Robertson. He had the best course I’ve ever taken in any subject; the man is a historian who is also a storyteller. Dr. Robertson is brilliant, but comes across as normal, which is a rarity in the Piled Higher and Deeper strata inside university education.
RevParadigm said: Maybe 2.0 isn’t so different than 1.0 when it comes to Creationism and such.
The difference is that over here, RickZ gets to see your side of the argument, and at 1.0 you would be labeled a knuckledragger and banned toute suite for even taking offense to his words. I take offense and my knuckles aren’t worn at all.
(face it Chuck, it’s what you do)
Aussie Infidel! I do hope that you saw my response to you the other day about the Bishop.
My words were about him alone and had nothing to do with the Catholic faith. I thought his apology was a non-apology.
The creation threads never did it for me. I never saw anyone change their beliefs due to someones compelling statement or challenge to them. I was raised Catholic and as a youth we housed the foreign brothers and sisters in training at Gonzaga University. This made for great entertainment and perspective on world views. My favorite was a young man, John, from Uganda during the Amin era. The stories were very sad. Everyone has their own ideas that are sacred to them and I leave it at that. You can say your peace and live it, and as long as it doesn’t encroach on others rights to enjoy their lives, go at it.
Well said Sparky.
Wow…an evolution thread in LGF2 ?
Who’d thunk?
And also much nicer in responses too!
LOL
Arwyn. I completely agree with your assessment of ‘bishop’ (well not actually a bishop as his promotion to bishop was not sanctioned by the Pope of the time.) The guy is obviously some kind of an idiot. I can only guess that some lazy bureaucrat in the Vatican is now ministering to lepers in Angola for dropping the Pope right in the shit over this. Apparently B XVI was not briefed on Fr. Williamson’s nutty beliefs prior to granting a blanket lifting of excommunication over the whole Pius X Society and bringing them back into the Church proper. B XVI should have been briefed but wasn’t and the secular MSM picked it up as an easy anti-Papal smear and ran with it like the nasty little ‘wombols’ they are. Bureaucracies screw up and this time it was the vatican who was in the frame.
By the way did you realize that Fr. Williamson’s license to preach and carry out religious duties as with all of the other members of the Pius X Society remain withdrawn, and will only be granted on a case by case basis after approaching the vatican for permission? I think Williamson is in for a long wait! One cannot ‘unmake’ a priest once ordained but the Church still has the power to forbid them from carrying out religious duties!
One gets the odd nutter in all organizations so don’t get too worked up with this MSM generated ’storm in a teacup’! LOL
Aussie Infidel
I was attempting to say what Gerald Schroeder says much better. Did you read the post on his quote?
Rick Z
Actually the nuns were pretty benign. Just the odd ruler across the knuckles for talking in class and such. The Marists were much tougher. Got caned on my first day for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was on ‘paper picking up duties’ did my duty diligently and then innocently wandered over into the ‘crusts’ picking up area where a crust throwing battle was raging. Got swept up with the ‘crust-ies’ and got 2 cuts for my trouble! A pretty raw deal! Used to get 20 French Vocab a night to learn and one cut for every one you got wrong the next morning! Now THAT was NOT the way to learn a language. Still I averaged 2.4 cuts per day for the bulk of my school time. After a while it didn’t mean squat and we just toughed it out and bore the pain as a badge of courage and NEVER let’em see you flinch!
\Our headmaster Br. Anselem must have got out of the wrong side of his bed one day and began asking us physics questions. As one got one wrong out the front they trooped to join the rest. In the end there were 5 ‘physicists’ left. He kept asking us questions and we kept getting ‘em right. We knew that he was getting more and more pissed off with this so the next question we all looked at leach other and nodded our agreement to say we didn’t know. Out the front we went to join the whole class of 72. We ALL got 2 cuts of the cane from ‘little richard’ the headmasters thin (and therefore more painful cane) We did however reek our vengeance. Someone left the Headmaster’s office door ajar and a ‘commando’ raided it and using a razor blade nicked the tip and inserted a single strand of horse hair, trimming it so that it was almost invisible. Next time ‘little richard’ was used it split lengthwise and was rendered useless forevermore.
We were also members of the School Cadet Corps. Long summer holidays were joined 5000 other school boys for army training at Singleton camp under canvas where we fired mortars old Vickers machine guns and rifles as well as learning navigation , survival and living off the bush! Cadets also included weekly , crew weapons drills and formation drill training and marksmanship at the school rifle range (in the handball courts. I was a submachine gun(Owen SMG) marksman at the tender age of 14! As well we were cubs and scouts on most weekends and ranged all over eastern Australia between the ages of 8 and 17. Then came the Army Reserve where i was commissioned and served in 3 armies. Australia, New Guinea and New Zealand. ( A Queen’s Commission is transferrable between Commonwealth Armies!) My best time was as a Platoon Commander with D Coy Papua New Guinea Volunteer Rifles based out of Wewak TPNG. I was flying as a bush pilot for the Passionist Missions at Vanimo on the TPNG North Coast and did my ‘think’ with the army down at Wewak and Lae. Commanded a 40 man platoon made up of Sepik warriors in the Eastern jungles of TPNG. great stuff. Fantastic flying too transporting EVERYTHING into remote mission stations deep in the jungle of northern New guinea. Wore out at least 2 guardian angels i think and came this close to buying the farm on 3 occasions! Still at 22 one is bullet proof! hehehe
Dear Song & Dance man… I did!
Please don’t take this the wrong way but most of what you have expounded or rather quoted another is to put it bluntly rubbish science that couldn’t hold up to even cursory exploration and analysis. WE already understand a great deal about the macro mechanisms and timetable (pardon the pun) of the so called Big Bang. Talking of mustard seeds is not very helpful because that would presuppose that matter actually existed when the universe was very small. It didn’t! Talking of a mustard seed also causes problems because the tiny universe didn’t have an ‘outside’ so how could one actually see the tiny universe except from a God view! That line of argument is therefore irrelevant and not helpful. won’t argue the points raised one at a time as it will only upset you and i certainly do not want to do that.
Kabbalist stuff seems to be of a comfort to some folks who seem to have only a very tenuous grasp of the realities, power and limitations of serious science. As long as you refrain from insisting that i wear red boot laces around my wrist
I’m prepared to back off and not debate your reported ‘pseudo scientific theories’.
No hard feelings Song & Dance man.
There is just so much more fabulous stuff on the table prepared for us to discover by God that to do anything but our very best to understand and appreciate it would be to fail ourselves and God too.
Can’t agree with your logic this time S&DM but i hope that we can debate on other issues that don’t impinge on your core beliefs and philosophies. All the best.
Aussie… still looking up and learning stuff!