Telling fact from fiction

[RoadRunner79]

Yes, so you need to see something first hand at least once in order to be able to believe that it is possible.   I don't see where a potential to go see it, makes a difference in if it is fiction or not.   But anyways, I now feel justified, in not just being skeptical of evolution, Sweden, and your post, but in calling them fiction.

Why?  You can study fossils yourself.  You can go to Sweden yourself, and you can read my post yourself.  All these things are within either your frame of reference or within your potential frame of reference, and covering your ears and chanting "La la la" just means you don't want to confirm that which you would not like to see confirmed.  The thing about evolution is that if there's a BETTER explanation of how species change over time, evolution will either be updated or dropped.  There's no "thou shalt believe in evolution, or face an eternity of torment."

I could potentially see those things, but I think there are some problems with your hypothesis.   The list of things, that I haven't experienced for myself is large.   I could go to Sweden, but what about all the other odd and different cultural differences.   Not to mention all the unique and odd creatures I see on Nat Geo and Discovery Channel.   I could go back to school to learn about evolution, but would I actually see evolution occur?   And what about the other subjects I'm interested in (physics, biology, chemistry, astronomy, archeology, and geology.   I may be able to see fossils, that some say you can infer evolution, but I can't see many of the claims in evolution demonstrated.   Perhaps you are independently wealthy, and have a lot of free time.   But, I have a business to run, and not enough money to do all those things; not to mention the other things I would be neglecting.  Perhaps you can fund me!

The potential to go see something very much matters.  If a scientist says something I disbelieve, I can follow his tracks-- potentially.  It is up to ME to confirm whether he's truthful or not.  If a religious person (or text) says something I disbelieve, I cannot follow their tracks, no matter how much I would like to.  I cannot go out and watch a man walk on water, or turn water into wine-- unless it's a Las Vegas performer.

So then the reproducibility problem I cited a while ago (from the journal nature), is a very large problem, in science, and a good deal of science is fiction.  This also brings up another problem that history is largely unrepeatable.   I need to gather all the facts, and determine how they go together to figure out what the best explanation of the evidence is.   This is largely what I was proposing, and you seem to disagree with.   I cannot repeat history, and I don't think that I need to understand how the pyramids where built (without modern machinery), to know that they where.   It may be unbelievable, that they could do this, at this time, but the pyramids being there, is evidence.  And I haven't even seen the great pyramids of Egypt for myself.  Even many of these fossils , while I may be able to see the fossils ( if they exist )  I may not have seen them removed, and much of the evidence that is used for dating them.

Let me say one last thing about this.  Disbelief in science is probably the most anti-theist thing you can do.  If you believe that God has laid out the world, then refusing to learn about the world means denying part of the mind of God.  If you believe that God has created the creatures of the Earth, then refusing to learn about evolution means that you'd rather dwell on the ideas of 1st-century Man than on the actual word of God as revealed in his creations, and as generously allowed for us to learn through the existence of fossils on His Earth.

Scientists, in their honest pursuit for understanding, are far closer to any God that exists than those who see science as the enemy.  So to any Christian who has no interest in learning about the natural world, I can only ask-- how have you come to hate the Truth, and the God that created this Truth, so much?

I don't have disbelief in science, although I don't believe every claim of scientists just based on authority.  I have come to question some of the evidence of evolution, just because I have found out, that their evidence wasn't quite what they alluded to.   When someone is making all sorts of claims about how a creature walked, and daily life, and then I find that this is based on the evidence of a partial jaw bone, then I think that is questionable.  Therefore I question what the claims are based on.    But I don't feel the need to see for myself every fossil, and piece of evidence, I just ask what they are basing their claim on.  I do tend to believe what they say they have seen, and others have confirmed, or there is other independent evidence supporting.