I recently conversed with woman who said that uranium halflife is 5000 years. I asked why. She said because some guy said so. I cited many sources which say it's 4.5 billion years. She said it's all atheist lies.
I ask why. She says because it conflicts with the bible which is of course truth.

Now she was not raised a believer. She read bible on her own and started believing it.
And it was after she converted she found that guy who said halflife is 5000 years and believed it.
Did any of you seen anything like this before?
She basically believed something and if anything conflicts with it no matter how convincing and how much evidence backs it up she will reject it as a lie.
Also the biggest reason she believed the bible were "small signs" from god. She had small events happening in her life and she somehow connected those events to the christianity. What is that all about?

Buddy, you'll see it all. the. time.

Here's a fun little game you can play: go to any "creation science," website, anyone you like. Go to ICR.org, answers in genesis, so on, and so forth. Look for their About Us page, or some page that explains the beliefs of the administrators there. See what you find.

There'll be a little clause there, in their beliefs, that will usually start "by definition, any perceived contradiction with the biblical account is incorrect." or somesuch. It's always there, if you look hard enough. Often identical across multiple sites.

Horrible!

It's a simple case of wanting to believe that shit in the first place. Some people just can't handle reality so they bury their heads in the sand.

Yeah but before christianity she believed that uranium halflife was 4.5 billion years. And it did made sense to her and she was ok with that. But once christianity got into the system she completely threw it out of the window and changed it to 5000 years just so it works with her religion.
Religion changed her whole perception on science.

I think that's the effect of having an epiphany. Is it that this woman started reading the Bible and thought okay, this makes sense to me? Or was there a moment when she experienced a moment of clarity, or understanding, or 'the hand of GOD' or some other transcendent feeling? Lots of people claim to experience the latter, and it can mark a huge shift in how they perceive the world. When you think about it, something like the half-life of uranium... why did she accept that it was 4.5 billion years before? She read it or heard it, most likely, and accepted it as it had no particular impact on her life. To believe that now could impact her new reality, and so when she reads or hears that it's really 5,000 it is more meaningful. To her it helps to confirm her new reality. It's not just a random factoid, it becomes an underpinning of her belief system.

(December 13, 2013 at 10:29 am)Tonus Wrote: I think that's the effect of having an epiphany. Is it that this woman started reading the Bible and thought okay, this makes sense to me? Or was there a moment when she experienced a moment of clarity, or understanding, or 'the hand of GOD' or some other transcendent feeling? Lots of people claim to experience the latter, and it can mark a huge shift in how they perceive the world. When you think about it, something like the half-life of uranium... why did she accept that it was 4.5 billion years before? She read it or heard it, most likely, and accepted it as it had no particular impact on her life. To believe that now could impact her new reality, and so when she reads or hears that it's really 5,000 it is more meaningful. To her it helps to confirm her new reality. It's not just a random factoid, it becomes an underpinning of her belief system.

She was convinced of it step by step through reading and connecting those small events in her life to religion she called them "signs". I don't think it happened in one day. But of course feelings played big role as well. She also believed in evolution her whole life but threw it out of the window as well.

(December 13, 2013 at 10:29 am)Tonus Wrote: I think that's the effect of having an epiphany. Is it that this woman started reading the Bible and thought okay, this makes sense to me? Or was there a moment when she experienced a moment of clarity, or understanding, or 'the hand of GOD' or some other transcendent feeling? Lots of people claim to experience the latter, and it can mark a huge shift in how they perceive the world. When you think about it, something like the half-life of uranium... why did she accept that it was 4.5 billion years before? She read it or heard it, most likely, and accepted it as it had no particular impact on her life. To believe that now could impact her new reality, and so when she reads or hears that it's really 5,000 it is more meaningful. To her it helps to confirm her new reality. It's not just a random factoid, it becomes an underpinning of her belief system.

It can happen gradually, too, though. My Hinduism is an accretion of thousands of events over the years. I think, the mind has a 'trajectory', for lack of a better word, and that trajectory asserts a stronger influence on what a person does and will believe than any assessment of beliefs in the rational sense. There are a number of cognitive biases which, combined, create the effect that the mind moves in a specific direction, towards ideologies or whatnot, largely independent of any intervening facts or experiences which seemingly 'should' prevent that mind from embracing the facts, beliefs, and worldview that it does end up embracing. The mind seems to have a strange kind of inertia that requires more than ordinary reason to counteract.

(December 13, 2013 at 10:08 am)feeling Wrote: I recently conversed with woman who said that uranium halflife is 5000 years. I asked why. She said because some guy said so. I cited many sources which say it's 4.5 billion years. She said it's all atheist lies.
I ask why. She says because it conflicts with the bible which is of course truth.

Now she was not raised a believer. She read bible on her own and started believing it.
And it was after she converted she found that guy who said halflife is 5000 years and believed it.
Did any of you seen anything like this before?
She basically believed something and if anything conflicts with it no matter how convincing and how much evidence backs it up she will reject it as a lie.
Also the biggest reason she believed the bible were "small signs" from god. She had small events happening in her life and she somehow connected those events to the christianity. What is that all about?

She sounds like a born-again. They're usually the worst

I often say that atheists are more open minded than fundamentalists. I've encountered theists who have stated, matter-of-factly, that if science proves 100% that the bible is wrong and they, themselves, can't dispute those facts, that they'll still believe the bible over science. Whereas I've encountered many atheists who have said they'll start believing in a god if shown conclusive proof. They might not worship (who, after all, could worship the god of the OT?), but they will believe.

The bible talks about uranium?

(December 13, 2013 at 11:57 pm)Beccs Wrote: Whereas I've encountered many atheists who have said they'll start believing in a god if shown conclusive proof. They might not worship (who, after all, could worship the god of the OT?), but they will believe.

In all fairness, that's a relatively safe wager for the atheist to make, given the likelihood of ever having to pay out in terms of belief.