Originally posted by Sandwich
Hmm, sounds suspiciously like scientific methodology, don't it? You have a theory that states that XYZ appears to be true. When presented with observed evidence that contradicts that theory, you change the theory to adapt - if possible - and continue on.
The difference is that science says it's fallible and that parts of the theory are bound to be incorrect. Creationists assume that every single part of the bible is literally true up until and even after having their nose rubbed in evidence that contradicts this. And even if they do admit to being wrong they simply claim that it's still all true and merely a metaphor. Quite simply the difference is that science is willing to say "We got it wrong".
Originally posted by Sandwich
As for 6 days, see the link below for the theory that satisfies my limited understanding of such things.
The hypothesis (I refuse to call it a theory) is full of errors and misunderstandings of physics but lets skip all the working and go straight to the conclusion.
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.
I am getting chills, but they're mainly over the fact that someone could have done so little research on those fields as to have gotten his numbers so wrong.
Firstly the theory has been made in such a way as to make sure that the numbers add up to give the age of the universe so he's not getting any credit for that being within the scientifically accepted range (which is 12 to 20 Billion years so he had a pretty good chance of getting there.). Lets look at the rest though. It's much easier to follow this if I work this claim backwards from modern day.
The sixth day - one-quarter billion years.
For those who don't know the bible the 6th day is from the time
after God created the sea animals and birds (they're from the fifth day) until the bible's historical record starts. That means that God can't have created any sea animals or birds on this day because he created them on the fifth day. Guess what. 250 million years is not only older than man (6 million for the first hominoids) but is older than the dinosaurs. So just on the first interval we've already run into trouble because whales are not older than the dinosaurs and birds only appeared in the jurassic period.
The fifth day - one-half billion years.
Including the time from the previous day that means the period between 750m years ago to 250million years ago is when God created the other animals. Well we already know the birds and whales stuff is a load of crap so lets look at the rest. Sorry but that's a load of sash too. Well presevered bacteria can be found in rocks 3,500 million years old so he's out by nearly 2 billion years. You're only going to get out of that one by claiming that only multicellular life counts and that is a huge is a cop-out.
Even if you do that he's still wrong about the birds. Not only were they not around at this time but there were lifeforms on land for the last 100 million years of this day dispite the fact that only the non-existant birds were supposed to be living there.
The fourth day - one billion years.
4th Day. God created the Moon, Sun and stars. Lets face it this one is f**king ridiculous. Not only does it have the sun as being younger than the Earth but it means that we shouldn't be able to see a single star more than 1.75 billion light years away as they would be too far away for their light to have reached us yet. He'll probably try to explain that away with some of his wishy-washy universe was expanding crap but he can't get round the fact that he's put an upper ceiling on the age of the sun and moon at 1.75 billion. The Sol is 5 billion years old and the moon is over 4.5 billion years old.
Wrong again.
The third day also lasted half of the previous day, 2 billion years.
The time for the creation of plants. I'd say that he was close to correct on this one if he means bacteria but the bible is pretty clear what it means by plants.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
Grass didn't appear until
after the dinosaurs died out. Which means that this hypothesis is out by at least 1.7 billion years.
Actually lets make it simpler than that. Multi-cellular life of any kind only appeared about 600 million years ago. He's missed that window by over a billion years.
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.
Okay. I'll pretty much give him these two. You can put the age of the Earth within the dates he gives for the second day and you may possibly be close to the age of the universe for the first one (Although you could be out by as much as 4 billion years)
So what have we got. The first point on the graph he got correct because science had already provided to him and he needed to use it. Out of the other 6 points he got one correct (within a huge margin of error) and drew a straight line.
That's not science. The first thing you learn in statistics is that you can't draw a graph with only two points.
Originally posted by Sandwich
All I was saying was that there are a number of "things" that were completely unsupported outside what the Bible said about them. There was (at the time) no evidence whatsoever to support what the Bible stated. But as time went on, and as new facts were revealed in the sciences (archeology, in this case), they supported what the Bible already stated to be true.
If that was all you were saying I wouldn't have objected to it. The bible is the written history of the Hebrew people. Since no other cultures were hugely interested in the Hebrew people it's obviously going to contain lots of information that no one else bothered to record.
My objection is to you claiming that nothing in the bible has been proven false. I've given you several examples of things in the bible which aren't true (The Earth being older than the Sun is my favourite) and yet you still persist in saying that it's all 100% correct.
What is even more bizarre is that you continue to maintain that evolution can not be true because Genesis tells us that God created man and then go on to insist that Genesis was deliberately simplified so that common folk could understand it. Wouldn't ommitting all the stuff on evolution and simply saying God created man also fall under that heading?
