[karajorma]

...of course, the Bible has been saying that there was a beginning to the universe from the very first word (in Hebrew - first 3 words in English).

It then goes on to explain how plants existed on Earth before the Sun, Moon or stars. So let's not start patting ourselves on back about the strange coincidence that a creation myth includes an act of creation.

[Grizzly]

I'm not trying to claim that we can get magical quantum equations from the Bible or anything like that. All I'm saying is that just because science hasn't proved something is true yet doesn't mean it's untrue, and more importantly, just because something is believed to be true scientifically doesn't mean that conclusive evidence can't come up to disprove it.

Which is exactly how scientists feel about it, so I don't understand how you just grouped science as a "Belief" system.

[AtomicClucker]

I'm going to defend Sandwhich's narrow views with an already well worn and tread subject:

Science is not belief, nor is it the flaunted religion that many pushers of so-called logic and reason attempt to force down my throat through gutless and cowardly means (insert atheist neck beards). Broad accusation, yo!

Science is a system to test a set of assumptions and testable hypothesis, in many ways, it say NOTHING about truth in so much as a set of results - the predictions are determined in the end by human senses and dealt with by the human mind. Information we receive into our mind isn't just photons and receptors in our eyes - they're metaphors for knowledge and experience. So depending if one is narrowly rooted and in fact fooled into believing the dangerously seductive low hanging fruit espoused by the recent rash of physicalist or materialist philosophies, science is not belief (though I would argue quite a few figureheads are already turning one of beloved subjects into an idol, forsooth). Insert terrible jokes about Neuroscience.

Science is a method, tool of explanation, albeit a form of testing "assumptions" according to a set a standards. But when it comes into matters of Truth, you pretty have to take logic, and kill it.

As I've said, Logic is "Complete" and "Sound" by our systems of reason, but "Math" is a language, and still has vague elements lodged into it. Quite frankly, that's why we can do algebra by placing an "x" in equation and denoting a value or trying to solve for one. Language is quite similar, as words we have today using in slang will have different meanings from the past, take the word "Gay," back then it meant "happy" but has now come to symbolize a sexual choice.

That being said, "Science" cannot form a fathomable notion of meaning - following the disaster known as Logical Positivism, there was a problem discovered that even language refused to be narrowly defined by logical means. Getting back to the earlier rant, simply put Kurt Goedel showed that the there were serious problems with Logical Positivism, and gave a firm death blow that is still to be felt in the mind of the broader scientific community that dabbles in philosophy lightly. It's easy to brush "Philosophy" as a "hobbyist" approach, but it deals in matters that science cannot, will not, and for all might and mane, do.

Science is not truth, and should not be. Problem is there's quite a few who think that way, and I've grown a bit more rash, dogmatic in my refusal to bend to this mindless pandering to labcoats and test tube faeries espoused as god-clothed angels of wisdom and enlightenment. I don't become enlightened by turning on a light bulb, I've got faith the damn thing still works until it reaches the end of its life. I know science is at work, how it functions, and I don't give a ****. There's no "Truth" from my lightbulb aside from the fact I take it for granted. Science cannot be used to derive meaning, or even deal with matters of art, philosophy, and questions of self. It's simply not that venue. Hell, Gould (with his notion of qualia) at least got it right that are problems that science cannot deal with or properly explain.

@Nuke: I don't believe religion taints things as religion is intrinsically human, I'm more saddened the "intellectually" charged have decided to turn a broad topic as "religion" into a bogeyman used to extoll our worst fears and virtue. To those who say "Crusades!" I counter with Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot. When dogmatic leaders of atheist movements are shown to actually to support "it may be ethical to kill for believing nonsense" (Sam Harris, good job btw) I think we should damn well step back and question very well what they are thinking and espousing. Believing we can solve the world's problems by "destroying" religion makes as much sense as destroying science. Rather, I find it a lazy intellectual answer to dealing with fundamentalism when we decided to castigate entire sections of humanity as "nutcases" before even delving into what, who, and why they are.

It is worthy endeavor to ask why? But it also an equal endeavor to argue why not?

And I'm starting to sound like John Lennox of all things, hmm....

[Sandwich]

...of course, the Bible has been saying that there was a beginning to the universe from the very first word (in Hebrew - first 3 words in English).

It then goes on to explain how plants existed on Earth before the Sun, Moon or stars. So let's not start patting ourselves on back about the strange coincidence that a creation myth includes an act of creation.

Err, no. This is why I wanted people to read that article I linked to. I'll leave the reasoning behind this correlation to the article, and just point out the conclusion here.

The Genesis account of creation does not take into account time dilation in its wording, and is written from the POV of an impartial observer (as far as space-time goes) at the moment time began. If we take time dilation into account, we end up with the 6 days of Genesis being equivalent to 7.1, 3.6, 1.8, 0.89, 0.45, and 0.23 billion years in length (respectively) - which adds up to 14.07 billion years as measured from our coordinates in space-time. Wikipedia states that "According to the Big Bang theory, the Big Bang occurred approximately 13.798 ± 0.037 billion years ago".

On to your point of plants before the Sun, moon, and stars. According to Genesis, God created light on Day One (has to be the sun), and separated it from darkness (rotation of the planet).

The second day He separated the dry land and the waters - the condensation of the extreme moisture in the planetary haze into the oceans, leaving behind... a perfectly clear atmosphere? Nope - probably still quite hazy and cloud-covered.

The third day was plants.

The fourth day, He says, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years" - the gradual clearing of the atmospheric haze to the point where the stellar bodies became visible from the planetary surface.

[The E]

I'm very sorry, but that to me sounds more like trying very hard to retrofit a genesis story onto what physics and astronomy have discovered over time.

And that to me is the big difference; Science never, ever assumes it has the final answer, whereas religion assumes the final answer is known and tries to reinterpret it so it fits into reality.

[karajorma]

I'm very sorry, but that to me sounds more like trying very hard to retrofit a genesis story onto what physics and astronomy have discovered over time.

That's exactly what it is. I doubt that anyone espoused that theory until science showed that the stars were actually older. Then suddenly the biblical "truth" was retrofitted to what actually happened.

I guess that goes to show that for all Sandwich's comments that current science could be wrong, the interpretation of the bible espoused by everyone on the planet has also been proven wrong.

Perhaps that section about stoning homosexuals means that we should give them pot.

[Flak]

I think the order of creation is Genesis is almost exactly the same as what you can find in science books. It is important to note that Moses didn't have access to all our fancy telescopes, carbon dating technologies, computers, various measuring devices, or even a nice collection of science books. It was also written in a way so the people on that time can understand, we would probably make their heads explode if Moses used our fancy science language and technical jargons.

[The E]

I'm sorry, that's once more trying too hard.

Look, the big problem you have in trying to defend this bonkers "Genesis describes actual stellar evolution" thing is that it's an interpretation of the text. There's nothing in there that even hints at the astronomic timescales involved. There's nothing in there that mentions dinosaurs.

There's also the slight problem of the judeochristian genesis story not being the only, or even the oldest one. If your religion claims to be the bearer of absolute truth, why are there so many competing truths out there? Why did it take a couple thousand years of recorded human history for the truth to come out?

Why, I have to ask, is the absolute truth about the creation of the universe, earth and human beings enciphered in a text that is so open to interpretation, so malleable, that it can be used to justify everything from going along with current scientific observations to "the Earth is only 4000 years old!"?

[AtomicClucker]

I'm sorry, that's once more trying too hard.

Look, the big problem you have in trying to defend this bonkers "Genesis describes actual stellar evolution" thing is that it's an interpretation of the text. There's nothing in there that even hints at the astronomic timescales involved. There's nothing in there that mentions dinosaurs.

There's also the slight problem of the judeochristian genesis story not being the only, or even the oldest one. If your religion claims to be the bearer of absolute truth, why are there so many competing truths out there? Why did it take a couple thousand years of recorded human history for the truth to come out?

Why, I have to ask, is the absolute truth about the creation of the universe, earth and human beings enciphered in a text that is so open to interpretation, so malleable, that it can be used to justify everything from going along with current scientific observations to "the Earth is only 4000 years old!"?

Let me expand this further: We *might* have what Moses said, but are not sure about it. But at least is more compelling than the milling masses of idiots who blindly worship the scientific method without even conducting one experiment in their moronic lives (provided they leave their parent's basement to pay off student debt) or have a grasp of greater historical and overly biased attitudes towards Biblical scholarship. The other problem is we don't have enough evidence or secondary sources outside the Old Testament, and that's going by long shot.

Welcome to the problem of interpretation: The Bible doesn't say anything about the Earth being 4000 years, in fact, nothing on this matter, we can thank a guy known as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology He tried to determine the age of the Earth according to their scientific principles of the day, and is now sadly associated with Young Earth Creationism. Point is he was eventually panned by critics, but at least more scientists of brevity try to give him credit for establishing a chronology.

On the other hand, I don't recall Science being a Bible, a Quran or a Torah, just a bunch of opinionated humans flapping their gums about the latest cosmological hodunkery they pulled from trash cans we put in orbit. Unless your Stephen Hawking, who decided that he write a book about the Cosmos and ride the New York times best-seller list while selling stupid junk-science dressed as philosophy (yes, I will call out Hawkings a douche after trying to read his latest book). Same thing can be said of theists, but who are they to question when not held aloft by legions of heavenly test tubes and protected by halos of stalwart scientific dogma and their ever present God of Relativity?

(Full of tongue and cheek hodunk right now).

[karajorma]

I think the order of creation is Genesis is almost exactly the same as what you can find in science books. It is important to note that Moses didn't have access to all our fancy telescopes, carbon dating technologies, computers, various measuring devices, or even a nice collection of science books. It was also written in a way so the people on that time can understand, we would probably make their heads explode if Moses used our fancy science language and technical jargons.

Actually it fails even on a simple level.

Day One - Light.
Day Two - Separating the waters, whatever the **** that means in scientific terms.
Day Three - Dry Land. Plants and fruit
Day Four - The Sun, the Moon, the stars
Day Five - ALL the creatures of the ocean. All the birds
Day Six - All the land animals. Humans.

Even a savage could explain those in simple terms and still get it correct. For a start Day 4 should come before Day 3 (and possibly Day 2). Birds should appear on Day 6 AFTER the land animals. These are simple, very basic mistakes.


If you want to claim that Genesis is allegorical, fine. But don't try to bull**** us about how it actually fits the scientific explanation. It doesn't. It's like trying to argue that a cube is a very simplified sphere.

[Flak]

Someone told me, so I am not sure how right am I on this part, if you continue putting very large amount of energy to water to split it into its atomic components, that is hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Then 'let there be light' to create a fusion and so 'light' was created, like the big bang. I am not sure how much the scientists managed to prove the big bang theory so no comment on that part.

Lastly I said not exactly a scientific explanation, haven't managed to get that far yet myself, but rather the ORDER the universe is created and put it next to what science tell you. Or in other words, what is created first, what is next, and so on. The 'day' is not exactly earth's day, it is just a symbolic term, so no exact amount time is given.

Doomsday 'prophets' love to use the term in 2 Peter 3:8 that 1 day is 1000 years to God, but Peter in that letter was saying something about the timelessness of God, not the equality statement 1 day = 1000 years, so we can't just say, for example,  the earth is 4000 years old based on that.

[karajorma]

As I pointed out the order is wrong. Even if you accept that a day is an arbitrary unit of time, the bible still has several things in the wrong order. And as I said that's pretty much a major flaw in the whole "The bible has things in the same order as science says it happened" theory.

[The E]

Someone told me, so I am not sure how right am I on this part, if you continue putting very large amount of energy to water to split it into its atomic components, that is hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Then 'let there be light' to create a fusion and so 'light' was created, like the big bang. I am not sure how much the scientists managed to prove the big bang theory so no comment on that part.

None of the facts mentioned here have anything to do with each other. Yes, you can break up the bonds between Oxygen and Hydrogen by electrolysis, but that has nothing to do with fusion, or the initiation thereof (Star formation being a pretty well understood process by now). There is no "let there be light" moment, there's just gravitational interactions between inconceivable amounts of hydrogen atoms in a stellar nebula.

Doomsday 'prophets' love to use the term in 2 Peter 3:8 that 1 day is 1000 years to God, but Peter in that letter was saying something about the timelessness of God, not the equality statement 1 day = 1000 years, so we can't just say, for example,  the earth is 4000 years old based on that.

And how do you know the doomsday prophets have it wrong?

I agree that that passage is highly allegorical, making a statement about how in Gods' timeless view, each moment is an eternity and eternity is a moment, but how do you know which parts you can take as a description of truth, and which are just allegories? Is there a secret second bible that god wrote that explains which parts should be read as literal truth and which ones are just similes and allegories and metaphor?

[Flak]

The main thing however, you have to understand the context of what is it written for. You can't just pick a single sentence, or even less than that while completely forgetting what is around it, that way you can easily miss the original meaning. One of the most (in)famous is people saying that 'money is the root of all evil'.

How the 'prophets' get it wrong isn't actually that year part, but rather the bible said that no man nor angels knows the exact time.

Sorry, I forgot to mention the earlier part. That was the second part of Genesis 1 :2 saying "And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." . That is what water I was talking about, not sure if what that man meant is star creation or the big bang. That was the first time I heard someone tried to mention it this way.

[Ghostavo]

Are people really going to take genesis seriously? It contradicts itself and other texts in the bible.

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/accounts.html
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/stars_made.html
etc...

[redsniper]

Seems to me that science most definitely is a belief system. Does it not require a belief that the tools we've created to measure the world around us are sufficient for the task - bug-free and completely accurate (we know that to be false - look at the hype a year or so ago about the "discovery" of faster-than-light particles)? That there's nothing to this world besides the observable or measurable (whether directly or indirectly makes no difference)? It's a system jam-packed with theories - theories which, to date, have yet to be disproven, because the moment a theory is proven wrong, it's no longer counted as science.

I'm going to have to call you out on this, because it's exactly the opposite of how science is done. You can't just believe your tools work and trust their measurements blindly. You have to know how they work and to what degree of accuracy, so that you can know how much confidence to place in your results, what kind of errors can skew those results, and how to decide if those results are bogus or not. Everything has error bars. Science is all about second guessing, refining, and solidifying its findings.

If things exist that aren't observable or measurable, that is, they don't affect the universe at all, then they may as well not exist. If something is not observable yet that doesn't mean it will always be that way, and doesn't mean it has no effect on the world.

And the whole faster than light neutrino thing was more a case of "we probably screwed up, but we can't figure out how" instead of "we totally broke physics guys. :smuggo:"

Is there a secret second bible that god wrote that explains which parts should be read as literal truth and which ones are just similes and allegories and metaphor?

Yeah, the Book of Mormon. :V

[Nuke]

@Nuke: I don't believe religion taints things as religion is intrinsically human, I'm more saddened the "intellectually" charged have decided to turn a broad topic as "religion" into a bogeyman used to extoll our worst fears and virtue. To those who say "Crusades!" I counter with Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot. When dogmatic leaders of atheist movements are shown to actually to support "it may be ethical to kill for believing nonsense" (Sam Harris, good job btw) I think we should damn well step back and question very well what they are thinking and espousing. Believing we can solve the world's problems by "destroying" religion makes as much sense as destroying science. Rather, I find it a lazy intellectual answer to dealing with fundamentalism when we decided to castigate entire sections of humanity as "nutcases" before even delving into what, who, and why they are.

its kinda useless to try to reason with nuke, both him and the voices in his head are beyond reason. didnt your mother ever tell you not to argue with crazy people? obligatory nuke all the things.

[Sandwich]

I'm very sorry, but that to me sounds more like trying very hard to retrofit a genesis story onto what physics and astronomy have discovered over time.

That's exactly what it is. I doubt that anyone espoused that theory until science showed that the stars were actually older. Then suddenly the biblical "truth" was retrofitted to what actually happened.

Let me get this straight. A professor uses modern science to finally figure out that a highly-controversial passage of the Bible agrees with science, and it's retrofitting? Why are liberals/atheists/whatever-the-term-you-prefer-is so resistant to the idea that the Bible might contains some truth, that they make up reasons why the Bible agreeing with modern science is invalid and bogus? Seems to me like you're the ones who have your heads in the sand, adamantly refusing to consider anything beyond your own narrow worldviews even when it agrees with said worldview.

Speaking of changing our understanding of something:

In 1959, a survey was taken of leading American scientists. Among the many questions asked was, “What is your estimate of the age of the universe?” Now, in 1959, astronomy was popular, but cosmology – the deep physics of understanding the universe – was just developing. The response to that survey was recently republished in Scientific American – the most widely read science journal in the world. Two-thirds of the scientists gave the same answer. The answer that two-thirds – an overwhelming majority – of the scientists gave was, “Beginning? There was no beginning. Aristotle and Plato taught us 2400 years ago that the universe is eternal. Oh, we know the Bible says ‘In the beginning.’ That’s a nice story; it helps kids go to bed at night. But we sophisticates know better. There was no beginning.”

That was 1959. In 1965, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered the echo of the Big Bang in the black of the sky at night, and the world paradigm changed from a universe that was eternal to a universe that had a beginning. Science had made an enormous paradigm change in its understanding of the world. Understand the impact. Science said that our universe had a beginning. I can’t overestimate the import of that scientific “discovery.” Evolution, cave men, these are all trivial problems compared to the fact that we now understand that we had a beginning. Exactly as the Bible had claimed for three millennia.

Anyone know where that quote is from? If not, I'm taking away your brownie points.

It details science doing exactly what you accused people of doing with the Bible - changing our understanding based on new evidence. In this case, new evidence that the universe had a beginning arose, so scientists the world over retrofitted their theories and opinions to adapt to this new evidence. How DARE they?!? And it agrees with the Bible, to boot! Blasphemy!

I'm going to have to call you out on this, because it's exactly the opposite of how science is done. You can't just believe your tools work and trust their measurements blindly. You have to know how they work and to what degree of accuracy, so that you can know how much confidence to place in your results, what kind of errors can skew those results, and how to decide if those results are bogus or not. Everything has error bars. Science is all about second guessing, refining, and solidifying its findings.

Seriously? You mention about science needing to solidify findings and yet deny that it's a belief? Scientists believe their instruments are reporting accurately. If they knew without a shadow of a doubt that the readings were true, they wouldn't need the instruments to begin with. Science has to rely on the accuracy of things based on past experience. I'm not saying that that is an unreasonable thing to do, mind you, it's quite a reasonable and logical process to take. I'm just pointing out how at the most basic level, there has to be that basic belief in the accuracy of your instrumentation.

If things exist that aren't observable or measurable, that is, they don't affect the universe at all, then they may as well not exist. If something is not observable yet that doesn't mean it will always be that way, and doesn't mean it has no effect on the world.

Your second sentence overrules your first one. Did you mean to do that?

[Luis Dias]

Not going to enter that Bible debate, although I have to say I'm delighted this thread has been mostly polite so far.

I just want to throw my own thoughts about Belief, Trust, Religion and Science, since I think that clearly we aren't using these concepts in the same manner around here. What I say might surprise some.

To me, belief in X is basically having a deep commitment and trust that a proposition X is true. So when people say "I believe in Science" some kittens die inside my heart. Science is not a "proposition", it's a project with a wide group of tools, methods and institutions. When people also say "Science doesn't deal with beliefs, exactly the opposite", it's like the other group of kittens dying inside my heart. Beliefs aren't these metaphysical ghosts that are to be shunned and destroyed until everyone becomes "Scientific" enough to not believe in anything, but rather have "heuristics" and "statistical confidence" or whatever in any and every proposition X, to which every scientific mind will always remain in a rigorous sense an Agnostic (this is what is usually meant when people say "there are no absolute truths").

However, "belief" is precisely this commitment and trust despite we having not an absolute confidence in it. I believe the sun will come out tomorrow. Scientific reasonings and findings about this particular proposition adds certainty to my belief. Scientific-minded people have lots and lots of beliefs and dogmas. "Dogma" is not an "Absolute truth" (Yes, I know, trust me on this one. A Dogma is a Truth that is held by every believer which is found to be true by the commitee of the Vatican, etc. Dogmas are written and overthrown all the time). So for instance, General Relativity is a huge dogma within the Scientific Institutions. What this means is not that it is absolute true, but that it is really difficult for anyone to disprove it, and every time someone claims to have done it everyone in the field will just go "uh uh" and demand extraordinary evidence. Dogma there isn't a bad word, once you understand that it just means a really strong truth that has been declared or found by an institution (in this case, Science).

In this sense, when I hear this kind of Dawkinsian-like fans pretending they don't believe in anything, they adhere to the scientific method and so on, I just picture a lot of kids trying to be adults and uttering the same words with the same fervor they see their parents doing in real situations, but without even imagining what is really behind those words and what they really mean. I just think it false. People believe period. If we let our beliefs be informed by certain heuristics, the best we can do is to try to make these heuristics the most accurate as we can. These heuristics can span between believing in institutions that seem to behave in strict accordance with the scientific method and so on, or believing everything your local priest says is true, or what a certain holy book tells you, or you just go to the deep end with lots of distrust on anyone on the matter and you do the research for yourself.

All these have problems. Some worse than others, some are more useful in certain moments than others. I don't read Nature to understand how I should deal with my wife and kids, and I certainly avoid most psychosocial studies on that front (my heuristics). But all of them involve beliefs.

[karajorma]

Let me get this straight. A professor uses modern science to finally figure out that a highly-controversial passage of the Bible agrees with science, and it's retrofitting? Why are liberals/atheists/whatever-the-term-you-prefer-is so resistant to the idea that the Bible might contains some truth, that they make up reasons why the Bible agreeing with modern science is invalid and bogus? Seems to me like you're the ones who have your heads in the sand, adamantly refusing to consider anything beyond your own narrow worldviews even when it agrees with said worldview.

The problem is that we're not arguing beliefs here. We're arguing provable facts. Your statement is that the Bible's Genesis story matches the scientific one. This is provably false. It's not a matter of belief, it's a matter of things being in the wrong order. They simply do not match. If you want to argue that the Bible is correct and science is wrong, go for it. But don't try telling me that they say the same thing cause it's blatantly obvious they do not.

It details science doing exactly what you accused people of doing with the Bible - changing our understanding based on new evidence.

What new evidence though? What new evidence has ever been used to alter the Bible in the last few hundred years? (With the exception of the Book of Mormon). Science always claims that its understanding of the universe is flawed and may be updated at a later point if new evidence appears. Christianity makes no such claims. The Bible is correct is the claim that is made. And if you want to claim that the Bible can be updated based on a scientific understanding of the universe, I want to know which parts of the bible can't be updated.