The Statler Waldorf Recovery Room
October 20, 2010 at 6:51 pm
(This post was last modified: October 20, 2010 at 6:56 pm by Existentialist.)
I can't for the life of me understand why so many people are consenting to respond to a Statler Waldorf thread that has been posted under the "Science and Mathematics" topic. Statler Waldorf hasn't got anything to do with science. Science and Statler Waldorf should not be brought into close proximity to each other - the combination is a public health hazard since it is bound to lead to a rapid increase in stress levels. The obvious antidote to this is to move anything to do with Statler Waldorf to the Religion topic where it belongs, therefore any exchange can be appropriately relaxed.
Anyway, I thought I'd post the conversation below here in an open thread because I finally got PM'd an answer last night about my questions in the "How Old is the Earth?" thread. Statler Waldorf has kindly agreed to let me copy and paste the reply publicly. The bold paragraphs are my questions, the rest are Statler Waldorf's answers. The exchange is polite and I'd rather it stayed that way. I have been sitting reading my screen quietly, open-mouthed at the contortions necessary to fit scientific explanations into the 6,000-year old Earth theory. I'd be really grateful for some retorts to Statler Waldorf's responses, I find the whole debate exhausting.
Infact, although I think Statler Waldorf should be preserved for posterity, I do think there is a serious point in these conversations, since we all know that it doesn't matter how much evidence is produced, and how much proof of the 4.5 billion year old earth there is, some creationists will always, to their dying breath, choose to contradict the many valid proofs that there are. What does this say about the value of objective truth?
Here goes...
[Existentialist]
I haven't quite followed what the explanations are for fossils appearing in the right rock layers according to multi-million year timescales, how plate tectonics is explainable in a 6,000 year timeframe, how ice cores seem to show a record of nearly a million years rather than 6,000 years, why there was a 2-second delay in radio communications with the moon explorers if electromagnetic radiation is supposed to be instantaneous, and how evolution itself was supposed to happen in 6,000 years (maybe it isn't, maybe that's the point).
[Statler Waldorf]
Well as far as fossils go. If a global flood did occur the fossil record is exactly what we would expect to find. Creation research has shown that an event like this can cause accerlated radio-metric decay, so the fossils buried earlest would under go this accerlated effect longer than the animals buried later. So we would expect the animals towards the bottom of the fossil column to radio-metrically date to be older than the ones higher up which they do.
Evolutionists claim that the fossil record moves from simple to complex as you move up, this is actually inaccurate. "Simpleness" is an arbratrary measurement and a lot of animals are thought to be simpler just because of their placing in the record like reptiles vs. birds. Are reptiles really more simple than birds? Not really. Another problem with this view is that many of the animals that appear to be morphologically simple are actually genetrically complex. Some species of amoebas have been found to have just as much DNA as humans.
Rather the fossil record is best explained by mobility and intelligence. The less intelligent and less mobile animals would be buried first. We see this. The more mobile but less intelligent animals would be next, small mammels and dinosaurs. We would expect that very few intelligent and mobile creatures would even be fossilized because they woudl excape the initial sediment flows and their bodies would then float to the surface and never be fossilized (i.e. humans and greater apes). Almost all cases of fossilizatoin indicate a quick and surprising buriel. A dinosaur fossil was actually recently discovered that was in the process of giving birth. The dinosaur tracks we find all appear to be fleeing something. All of this would indicate a global catastrophe.
As for plate tectonics. There are two branches of thought on this subject in the Creationist camp. One group actually does not believe in true plate tectonics and continental drift (whcih there are secular scientists who deny it as well). They believe all the animals would have been wiped out on these continents and then they would have just been re-populated by animals using ice bridges during the Ice Age. The second group believes in catestrophic plate techtonics. There is a computer model built that shows how the runaway subduction of negatively buoyant ocean lithosphere into the Earth’s mantle could happen in a very short period of time due to the flood. I tend to lean towards this second group because it solves the "not enough water" problem and helps to also explain the animals we see on different continents.
As for ice cores, what is actually observed in ice cores is a very clear history for the last few thousand years. However, once you get past that point the ice starts to lose it's obvious layers and appears all "squished" together. So secular scientists just assume the annual accumulation thicknesses still apply and keep on counting the years through this portion of the ice. The creation looks at this and believes the majority of the ice prior to a few thousand years was deposited rather quickly and that would account for the apparent absence of "annual" layers. Again, it's two difference interpretations for the same observation.
Creationists beleive a lot of rapid speciation has occured in the last 6,000 years (hence why 30 million different species of animals did not need to be taken onto the Ark), but not the entire evolutionary model that involves common descent.
[Existentialist]
First, I don't see why god would bother, when he made all the stars appear an Day 4, to make it look to us as if they had all been created as part of a multi-billion year timeframe. The timelines for stellar development over billions of years seem consistent with observation, they don't need to be the same star. If you were presented with examples of 80 human males each in a different year of life, you could easily model the typical development of one human male. Same with stars, surely.
[Statler Waldorf]
Like many things, there are different models to explain this too. I actually just watched a DVD on the Starlight and Time problem a couple weeks ago and although I for the most part understood it, it did leave me a bit confused because astrophysics is not my field. One model can explain the history of the Universe using how time is effected by gravity and using gravitational wells to explain how 6000 years could elapse from Earth's perspective but 20 billion elapse elsewhere in the universe. Another model uses how time is believed to behave inside a black hole to explain this same thing. The third model (which I like because it's cleaner) explains how the account in the Bible is written from an observational definition of time. So god could have created distant stars long before day 4 (by calculated time standards) but the light would have al reached Earth on day 4 and been recorded correctly as doing so.
As to the question, "why would God be sneaky about all of this?", I do not believe He has been. If I tell someone in Portland, Oregon, "I just got here from Las Vegas." They might say,
"Oh so you left Las Vegas 15 hours ago because that's how long it takes to drive from Vegas to Portland right?"
Then I would say, "Well I never said I drove, I actually flew two hours from Vegas to San fran, had an hour lay over, and then flew two hours from San Fran to Portland, so it only took me 5 hours".
The first person would not turn around and say, "You are being deceiful because it looks to me like it should have taken you 15 hours". No, they would most likely say, "Oh I am sorry, I just incorrectly assumed you drove".
So when God tells us that a global flood occured and that the Earth is young, then we turn around and assume one did not occur and use these assumptions to conclude the Earth is old, I do not believe it is God who is deceiving us. We are just not using proper assumptions. Does that make any sense at all? That was the best example I could come up with off the top of my head.
[Existentialist]
But more importantly if, as we both agree, interpreting any evidence involves an act of faith, because however many spreadsheets we create, we still have to interpret what is there and make our own minds up and trust our judgement; if that is the case then why does the Bible need to be read literally at all - you could conclude that everything in it is intended to be metaphorical, still beautiful stories but not literally true, even the virgin birth, because you can still interpret the metaphor and everything else you see in front of you as being evidence of God's existence. Why the need to have much concrete evidence to support the young earth theory? A tiny amount of evidence could be interpreted correctly, a large amount of evidence could be interpreted incorrectly - so why the need to keep pointing to a mass of evidence and attacking the evidence of rationalistic atheists?
[Statler Waldorf]
Well when I say I take scripture literally I am using the original definition of "literal". This word has kind of taken on a new definition but it was originally intended to mean that you interpret something according to the literary style it was written in. So if it is a poem, you read it has a poem, if it is a metaphor you interpret it as a metaphor. The original Hebrew makes it very clear that the stories in the Old Testament of the Bible were written as actual history so I interpret them that way. I feel that certain events in the Bible need to be interpreted as real events because of their Theological significance. The Bible makes way more sense when you do this. An example would be the virgin birth. This is described as a super-natural event- so the fact that virgins do not naturally give birth does not disprove the Biblical claim since the Bible never claimed it happend naturally. If it did claim this, then I would take some issue to the accuracy of scripture. However, the Virgin Birth is important because it ensures that Christ was born without original sin and He could live a perfect life and also then be a true atonement for the sins of His people. So interpreting the virgin birth as an actual event is very important to the whole of Christianity.
Anyway, I thought I'd post the conversation below here in an open thread because I finally got PM'd an answer last night about my questions in the "How Old is the Earth?" thread. Statler Waldorf has kindly agreed to let me copy and paste the reply publicly. The bold paragraphs are my questions, the rest are Statler Waldorf's answers. The exchange is polite and I'd rather it stayed that way. I have been sitting reading my screen quietly, open-mouthed at the contortions necessary to fit scientific explanations into the 6,000-year old Earth theory. I'd be really grateful for some retorts to Statler Waldorf's responses, I find the whole debate exhausting.
Infact, although I think Statler Waldorf should be preserved for posterity, I do think there is a serious point in these conversations, since we all know that it doesn't matter how much evidence is produced, and how much proof of the 4.5 billion year old earth there is, some creationists will always, to their dying breath, choose to contradict the many valid proofs that there are. What does this say about the value of objective truth?
Here goes...
[Existentialist]
I haven't quite followed what the explanations are for fossils appearing in the right rock layers according to multi-million year timescales, how plate tectonics is explainable in a 6,000 year timeframe, how ice cores seem to show a record of nearly a million years rather than 6,000 years, why there was a 2-second delay in radio communications with the moon explorers if electromagnetic radiation is supposed to be instantaneous, and how evolution itself was supposed to happen in 6,000 years (maybe it isn't, maybe that's the point).
[Statler Waldorf]
Well as far as fossils go. If a global flood did occur the fossil record is exactly what we would expect to find. Creation research has shown that an event like this can cause accerlated radio-metric decay, so the fossils buried earlest would under go this accerlated effect longer than the animals buried later. So we would expect the animals towards the bottom of the fossil column to radio-metrically date to be older than the ones higher up which they do.
Evolutionists claim that the fossil record moves from simple to complex as you move up, this is actually inaccurate. "Simpleness" is an arbratrary measurement and a lot of animals are thought to be simpler just because of their placing in the record like reptiles vs. birds. Are reptiles really more simple than birds? Not really. Another problem with this view is that many of the animals that appear to be morphologically simple are actually genetrically complex. Some species of amoebas have been found to have just as much DNA as humans.
Rather the fossil record is best explained by mobility and intelligence. The less intelligent and less mobile animals would be buried first. We see this. The more mobile but less intelligent animals would be next, small mammels and dinosaurs. We would expect that very few intelligent and mobile creatures would even be fossilized because they woudl excape the initial sediment flows and their bodies would then float to the surface and never be fossilized (i.e. humans and greater apes). Almost all cases of fossilizatoin indicate a quick and surprising buriel. A dinosaur fossil was actually recently discovered that was in the process of giving birth. The dinosaur tracks we find all appear to be fleeing something. All of this would indicate a global catastrophe.
As for plate tectonics. There are two branches of thought on this subject in the Creationist camp. One group actually does not believe in true plate tectonics and continental drift (whcih there are secular scientists who deny it as well). They believe all the animals would have been wiped out on these continents and then they would have just been re-populated by animals using ice bridges during the Ice Age. The second group believes in catestrophic plate techtonics. There is a computer model built that shows how the runaway subduction of negatively buoyant ocean lithosphere into the Earth’s mantle could happen in a very short period of time due to the flood. I tend to lean towards this second group because it solves the "not enough water" problem and helps to also explain the animals we see on different continents.
As for ice cores, what is actually observed in ice cores is a very clear history for the last few thousand years. However, once you get past that point the ice starts to lose it's obvious layers and appears all "squished" together. So secular scientists just assume the annual accumulation thicknesses still apply and keep on counting the years through this portion of the ice. The creation looks at this and believes the majority of the ice prior to a few thousand years was deposited rather quickly and that would account for the apparent absence of "annual" layers. Again, it's two difference interpretations for the same observation.
Creationists beleive a lot of rapid speciation has occured in the last 6,000 years (hence why 30 million different species of animals did not need to be taken onto the Ark), but not the entire evolutionary model that involves common descent.
[Existentialist]
First, I don't see why god would bother, when he made all the stars appear an Day 4, to make it look to us as if they had all been created as part of a multi-billion year timeframe. The timelines for stellar development over billions of years seem consistent with observation, they don't need to be the same star. If you were presented with examples of 80 human males each in a different year of life, you could easily model the typical development of one human male. Same with stars, surely.
[Statler Waldorf]
Like many things, there are different models to explain this too. I actually just watched a DVD on the Starlight and Time problem a couple weeks ago and although I for the most part understood it, it did leave me a bit confused because astrophysics is not my field. One model can explain the history of the Universe using how time is effected by gravity and using gravitational wells to explain how 6000 years could elapse from Earth's perspective but 20 billion elapse elsewhere in the universe. Another model uses how time is believed to behave inside a black hole to explain this same thing. The third model (which I like because it's cleaner) explains how the account in the Bible is written from an observational definition of time. So god could have created distant stars long before day 4 (by calculated time standards) but the light would have al reached Earth on day 4 and been recorded correctly as doing so.
As to the question, "why would God be sneaky about all of this?", I do not believe He has been. If I tell someone in Portland, Oregon, "I just got here from Las Vegas." They might say,
"Oh so you left Las Vegas 15 hours ago because that's how long it takes to drive from Vegas to Portland right?"
Then I would say, "Well I never said I drove, I actually flew two hours from Vegas to San fran, had an hour lay over, and then flew two hours from San Fran to Portland, so it only took me 5 hours".
The first person would not turn around and say, "You are being deceiful because it looks to me like it should have taken you 15 hours". No, they would most likely say, "Oh I am sorry, I just incorrectly assumed you drove".
So when God tells us that a global flood occured and that the Earth is young, then we turn around and assume one did not occur and use these assumptions to conclude the Earth is old, I do not believe it is God who is deceiving us. We are just not using proper assumptions. Does that make any sense at all? That was the best example I could come up with off the top of my head.
[Existentialist]
But more importantly if, as we both agree, interpreting any evidence involves an act of faith, because however many spreadsheets we create, we still have to interpret what is there and make our own minds up and trust our judgement; if that is the case then why does the Bible need to be read literally at all - you could conclude that everything in it is intended to be metaphorical, still beautiful stories but not literally true, even the virgin birth, because you can still interpret the metaphor and everything else you see in front of you as being evidence of God's existence. Why the need to have much concrete evidence to support the young earth theory? A tiny amount of evidence could be interpreted correctly, a large amount of evidence could be interpreted incorrectly - so why the need to keep pointing to a mass of evidence and attacking the evidence of rationalistic atheists?
[Statler Waldorf]
Well when I say I take scripture literally I am using the original definition of "literal". This word has kind of taken on a new definition but it was originally intended to mean that you interpret something according to the literary style it was written in. So if it is a poem, you read it has a poem, if it is a metaphor you interpret it as a metaphor. The original Hebrew makes it very clear that the stories in the Old Testament of the Bible were written as actual history so I interpret them that way. I feel that certain events in the Bible need to be interpreted as real events because of their Theological significance. The Bible makes way more sense when you do this. An example would be the virgin birth. This is described as a super-natural event- so the fact that virgins do not naturally give birth does not disprove the Biblical claim since the Bible never claimed it happend naturally. If it did claim this, then I would take some issue to the accuracy of scripture. However, the Virgin Birth is important because it ensures that Christ was born without original sin and He could live a perfect life and also then be a true atonement for the sins of His people. So interpreting the virgin birth as an actual event is very important to the whole of Christianity.
