4 ms·

You raise a good point re: assumptions -- I think the hidden axiom is "The bible is the literal word of God. Therefore, if there's a contradiction then my idea

by kalid 16y ago

You raise a good point re: assumptions -- I think the hidden axiom is "The bible is the literal word of God. Therefore, if there's a contradiction then my idea of a perfect God is flawed, and probably doesn't exist". Maybe I'm naive, but I cannot fathom how someone could -really- believe the world was N thousand years old (when there are trees 5000 years old!), and not as an elaborate way to defend their faith. In this context I think "believe" means "hope" -- "I hope the world is 6000 years old, because I need to reinforce my axiom of literal biblical truth" vs. "I believe the world is 6000 years old, and would bet money the radioactive dating on this piece of rock will say so (or that this tree will have no more than 6000 rings)." The separate question is what you call someone who easily believes / defends ideas which are easily disproven -- if not stupid, then gullible? Naive?

nl 16y ago
These ideas aren't easily disproven. The evidence you are giving (basically carbon dating) is widely disbelieved by creationists: http://www.google.com/search?q=carbon+dating+false http://www.google.com/search?q=carbon+dating+false Basically they find themselves enough problems with the theory of carbon dating that it lets them keep an internally consistent model (eg, "yes, I am a rational person, but all those scientist using carbon dating didn't take into account the effect changes in the earths magnetic field have on Carbon 14 production" http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/does-c14-disprove-the-bible http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/does-c14-dispro...) Yes, you can disprove this too. But soon you are requiring such a level of knowledge that you and the other person are just quoting random sources from the Internet. Sure, your sources may be real peer-reviewed journals and theirs may be blogs, but then you'll have to prove your sources are better than theirs (which isn't easy, given the amount of valid criticism peer-reviewed journals get). Soon the argument will come down to authority on the internet you'll end up arguing that Perelman's (Fields medal winning) non-peer reviewed solution to the Poincaré conjecture is okay, but other crazy theories in the same pre-print archive are not okay because umm.. they just aren't. I agree they are gullible. But I don't think proving it is as easy as you may think.
- sp332 16y ago
  >Sure, your sources may be real peer-reviewed journals and theirs may be blogs Or they might just start a peer-reviewed journal to point at. This one's been around for a while. http://creation.com/periodicals#journal_of_creation http://creation.com/periodicals#journal_of_creation There's even a pretty sophisticated cosmological model that tries to fix some of the timescale issues. http://www.icr.org/article/seven-years-starlight-time/ http://www.icr.org/article/seven-years-starlight-time/ This kind of thing makes the argument even harder.
  - eru 16y ago
    I had a physics teacher who liked to discuss with crackpots (not too many hardcore Christians in Germany). He agreed with what your saying: Disproving their models is hard, and those guys aren't stupid. As an exercise: Try to convince me that the Earth isn't flat.

by kalid 16y ago

nl 16y ago

These ideas aren't easily disproven. The evidence you are giving (basically carbon dating) is widely disbelieved by creationists: http://www.google.com/search?q=carbon+dating+false http://www.google.com/search?q=carbon+dating+false Basically they find themselves enough problems with the theory of carbon dating that it lets them keep an internally consistent model (eg, "yes, I am a rational person, but all those scientist using carbon dating didn't take into account the effect changes in the earths magnetic field have on Carbon 14 production" http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/does-c14-disprove-the-bible http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/does-c14-dispro...) Yes, you can disprove this too. But soon you are requiring such a level of knowledge that you and the other person are just quoting random sources from the Internet. Sure, your sources may be real peer-reviewed journals and theirs may be blogs, but then you'll have to prove your sources are better than theirs (which isn't easy, given the amount of valid criticism peer-reviewed journals get). Soon the argument will come down to authority on the internet you'll end up arguing that Perelman's (Fields medal winning) non-peer reviewed solution to the Poincaré conjecture is okay, but other crazy theories in the same pre-print archive are not okay because umm.. they just aren't. I agree they are gullible. But I don't think proving it is as easy as you may think.

sp332 16y ago
>Sure, your sources may be real peer-reviewed journals and theirs may be blogs Or they might just start a peer-reviewed journal to point at. This one's been around for a while. http://creation.com/periodicals#journal_of_creation http://creation.com/periodicals#journal_of_creation There's even a pretty sophisticated cosmological model that tries to fix some of the timescale issues. http://www.icr.org/article/seven-years-starlight-time/ http://www.icr.org/article/seven-years-starlight-time/ This kind of thing makes the argument even harder.
- eru 16y ago
  I had a physics teacher who liked to discuss with crackpots (not too many hardcore Christians in Germany). He agreed with what your saying: Disproving their models is hard, and those guys aren't stupid. As an exercise: Try to convince me that the Earth isn't flat.