One question for Christians

[Statler Waldorf]

Not subconsciously; linguistically, as a matter of conversational convention. Much in the same way that you and I reference ancient gods when we invoke the days of the week or months of the year.

Is scripture not allowed to use such language for convenience? I smell special pleading.

Or when we exclaim "JESUS!" when we see oncoming danger. Like I said, tradition is a powerful thing.

That’s a habitual reaction, I doubt someone writing for NASA types “sunrise” or “sunset” without even realizing it. There is a good reason for doing it and you have yet to touch on it, Stimbo was closer.

OK, so you're assuming another light source that Yahweh took away after the sun was created? Kind of like a temporary brace to hold up a ceiling while construction on a supporting wall is done, to be taken out once the support structure is complete? Scripture doesn't say so but I'll let you have that ret-con.

I am not assuming anything; scripture says light was created on day 1, so obviously it existed prior to the Sun.

Fine then. At least you're not a flat-earther or a geo-centrist. Glad you listen to science and reject the Bible at least some of the time. You and YahwehIsTheWay can debate these point. He says we live on a flat earth and the sun revolves around it because scripture says so. In fact, a debate on scripture between the two of you on geo-centrism and flat-earth as revealed in the Bible might be fun.

I am not here to debate Christians. Scripture doesn’t teach the Earth is flat, that’s obvious by passages in Joshua 10 and in Luke 17, the shape of the Earth was obvious to ancient peoples whenever ships would disappear over the horizon. Washington Irving perpetuated the myth that everyone thought the Earth was flat until the Middle Ages, but that’s all it is, a myth.

And you wonder why I don't take your arguments seriously?

No, I don’t wonder at all, irrational people don’t take rational arguments seriously. I am perfectly fine making such arguments and you allowing them to stand un-refuted, makes the debate really easy to win.

First of all, so are you seriously suggesting that the earth is older than the sun?

You already posted the chronology of Genesis 1.

Second of all, science is self-correcting and has a process of peer-review to ferret out faulty experiments and conclusions. Scripture can neither correct itself nor is there any peer-review process. For this reason, I trust science over any scripture.

So you’re using science to justify your use of science? Nice circularity. Scripture is self-attesting and infallible, science is fallible. Go ahead and take a fallible source over an infallible one, but that just makes you irrational.

Thirdly, to say we can't use science to dispute scripture is like saying we can't use reality to disprove fantasy. OK, what can I use then, since reality and facts are pesky things that I'm not allowed to use?

You’re using question-begging epithets to try and prove a point, which again makes you irrational. You cannot use a source that we know is fallible to try and prove another source is also fallible, that’s pretty basic reasoning.

You can look up into the sky on a clear night, right?

I can.

This means that the Andromeda Galaxy is at least 2 million years old.

Nope, it’s impossible to know that, you can stipulate it, but that does not prove anything.

“That light requires the same time to traverse the path A → M as for the path B → M is in reality neither a supposition nor a hypothesis about the physical nature of light, but a stipulation which I can make of my own freewill in order to arrive at a definition of simultaneity” – Einstein, Relativity: The special and general Theory, 1961

Not 6,000 years old. Or 10,000 years.

Appealing to a mere stipulation does nothing to prove it’s any older.

The sky is not a dome.

Why not?

b]Exodus 31:17[/b] It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.

No, someone can be refreshed without being tired (the Pepsi I am drinking is rather refreshing, and yet I am not tired), if the verse was wanting to suggest God was reinvigorated after resting because he was tired it would have used the word ravach. It also would have not used the word shabat for rest because that means to pause or cease exertion or even to celebrate; it has nothing to do with needing a break. The way refreshed is used here means more of a sense of satisfaction (as in the case of cooling air or a cold drink), which is consistent with what we also read in Genesis 1:31, it does not mean God was tired and needed a nap. You only possess a very basic level of understanding of scripture.

“Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable”

- Isaiah 40:28 (ESV)

“He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
4 Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.”
- Psalm 121:3-4 (ESV)

Poor guy was bushed after doing all that work.

Nope, just satisfied, and it was wondrous work.

The universe is stranger than we can imagine.

You dodged my question, at what point in time was time created? Created by what?

By our research now, it seems that time and space and matter are inter-related in one fabric. Did you know that time moves more quickly as you get away from gravity sources? And it slows down as you move toward them? That's why satellites have to compensate for this difference.

Yup, which is why a God who created all matter and who Himself is immaterial would be timeless and eternal, funny how that actually works eh?

The absolutely needless redundancy of the sun in this scenario demonstrates an example of the lack of understanding and thought that went into this myth. You're trying to account for the bad writing of people who obviously didn't know what they were talking about.

Light can exist without the Sun; tell me you knew that….please.

What reason is there to believe in it? Where is the proof of its divine inspiration?

Simple, if scripture isn’t inerrant all of reality is rendered unintelligible.

That's why physicists use the term 'spacetime', as a way of describing the lockstep interconnectedness of the two. Altering one in any way will affect the other. Indeed, you can't have one without the other. I agree the phraseology can be confusing but it's hardly "non-sense" unless distorted to be so; blame instead the limitations of the English, and occasionally Latin and Greek, language.

But to answer your rhetorical question, space and time were 'created' at the same moment and then matter came along later once the Universe had expanded enough such that the initial plasma state had cooled to the point at which particles could form.

They were created by what and at the same moment in what?.....time? Time and space were created at the same moment in time, that statement is non-sense.

Telling me that something is God-breathed (and thank you for defining this term for me) is the same as telling me that Santa Claus called you on the telephone and told you to write down his naughty and nice list, after which you proceeded to propagate this information to everyone. I can't take you on your word because, first, you would need to prove that Santa is real, and, second, I don't care who Santa thinks is naughty or nice. Even if the god of the bible were real, I still would not worship him because I don't like with what people have written about him.

No, this falsely assumes that the existence of God is something that is reasoned to, rather than the foundation for all reason.

Thanks for looking out for me. But do you apply the same standard that you use to believe in the Bible to Al-Quran or the Bhagavad Gita? I would hope so, or your words of comfort would mean nothing to me.

You’re welcome; I’ve got your back! Yes, I actually hold scripture to a higher standard than any of those.

Fair enough. Although you say that I don't accurately represent your positions and doctrines, I feel that the job of doing that should be up to you, as the representative. Instead, it's up to me to understand your point of view.

I only said that because you were arguing against positions I do not hold to, rather than first asking me what the doctrine of inspiration all entails.

I do know what "God-breathed" means, and I was instead poking fun at it, because I think the concept is simply ridiculous, and the words themselves sound funny.

Poke all the fun you like, but it doesn’t do anything to support your position.

You're right. I was misappropriating my words. Let me take a step back and instead say instead that smart men were making the best approximations at how their world works. Due to discoveries of our days, their assertions look really dumb.

Or, smart men of the day were inspired by God to write down His words, and therefore nothing you read in scripture is actually wrong when interpreted in accordance with its literary purpose.

I would say that sometimes we appeal to special knowledge without realizing that we do so. Any assertion that says that there is an invisible god and the justification for believing such a concept always takes special knowledge, or special pleading. The belief itself is special, as it cannot be proven with demonstrable evidence.

Belief in God doesn’t require special knowledge though; billions of people get to that point without knowledge unavailable to anyone else.

Ah, shit. It wasn't a personal attack, but if you feel attacked, then I'm sorry. English colloquial speech inserts the Second-person voice "you" for the more accurate in this situation Third-person voice "one". Check it: "You are a special kind of retard if you want to believe that" should have been written " One[/be] is a special kind of retard if [b]he or she wants to believe that". That's my mistake, and I'll take the rap for it.

Well either way, you’re implying I am retarded for believing what I believe, which is obviously not true.

As for your explanation that follows...well, I agree. And that's what I was pointing out: that if we take those words written by the authors in Genesis about the sun and the moon to mean anything more, whether it be that they are light-sources or cheese, or whatever, then that person is making an assumption based on their own bias.

I totally agree, then why are we debating this? The Moon and the Sun are both lights, I have no issue with that statement.

No, you chose to ignore the contradictions because you read the Bible with Rose-colored glasses, as evidenced by the fact that you think it's unerring due to a doctrine that says all words in it are "God-breathed". I'll chalk this up to brain-washing, since my time in the Mormon Church gives me some insight on how that looks. Just because you choose to ignore the contradictions, doesn't mean they aren't there.

No, no, no; Christians believe that God cannot contradict Himself, so if you can provide an actual real straight-up internal logical contradiction (“A” and “Not A” at the same time and in the same sense/relationship) then it would refute Biblical inerrancy. The problem is nobody can provide one because all the examples they give do not fit the definition. Were you raised Mormon?

And this is why I gave you rep. Your cool, calm demeanor keeps an A.D.D. guy like me on track. Tangents are a way of life for a firebrand like myself, and I do appreciate your efforts.

I do not mind partaking in a discussion that has taken itself off course a bit (especially when the topic is more interesting than the OP, like in our case here), but I wanted to keep us on point for a skosh because the topic was very important. I think we’re on the same page more now, so if you’d like to discuss anything else, I will follow you willingly down that rabbit hole.

This is a good answer to my question about how you know how Yahweh thinks due to the fact that you can plainly read about his actions and words in your holy book. Most Xians are reluctant to admit this because they often claim the contradictory statement, "God is unknowable". However, it's these same actions and words that steer me clear of the god of the Bible. As I said before, even if he were real, I could not worship this guy. Modeling my morality after his own would make me a disreputable character indeed.

Sure, we’ll never know everything there is to know about God, but as far as He has revealed Himself through His word and the things He has made we can have knowledge of Him.

Okay, I'll concede a few things here. You're right that it doesn't prove all claims are true, but the Pink Unicorn/Invisible Dragon analogy stands as a good example for outrageous claims needing proof.

Yes, but I do not feel the Creator of the Universe is in the same category as an invisible dragon or invisible pink unicorn (still trying to figure out how something that is invisible can also be pink ).

Jimmy John from the office tells you that he ate a sandwich for lunch. Even though this is entirely plausible, it doesn't make it automatically true. We believe Jimmy though, because our experience tells us that eating a sandwich for lunch is not only possible and probably true, but there's also no reason to disbelieve him, as it doesn't really matter in the end if he ate a sandwich or a burrito. Our standard of evidence is very low, and the evidence is our human experience with hearing claims like this.

You believe Jimmy ate a sandwich because there’s no reason to disbelieve him? Well, now that sounds like all claims are assumed to be true until a reason to doubt them is given….no?

On the other hand, Susan Simpson tells us that she rode a dragon to work. Hopefully we don't take her claim at face value. Experience tells us that there is nothing that can give automatic credence to her claim, for there is no evidence readily available to have us believe that she rode a dragon. The standard of evidence, therefore, needs to be higher.

What if 2.3 billion people told you that dragons were real? I think that’s a better example.

This is how I see the claims about god, Bigfoot, Loch Ness, Alien Abductions, you name it. It's fine that everyone doesn't have the same standard of evidence for everything, because it's not always necessary to do a full investigation into whether or not little Timmy stole a cookie from the cookie jar. If your standard of evidence for believing in an invisible god is as low as Timmy's theft, then that's your prerogative. I'm saying your standard is low for all things, but that maybe you should reexamine claims as important as belief in an invisible god whose only reference are 2000 year-old books written by people with limited knowledge about the world.

I still think that lumping God in with such finite entities, events, and creatures is a category error. I do not believe in God simply because a book says I should, I believe in God because without this belief and book I cannot make sense of anything else in the world. To me, questioning whether God exists or not is like cutting the very branch you are sitting on.

Special pleading.

How so?

Special pleading still seems to be the best you've got.

How is that special pleading? Are you really suggesting plants can survive only if the light they are receiving comes from the Sun?

Science is fallible, but the point of science is to give us the best approximation given the available evidence. An appeal to science is exactly what the doctor ordered here.

Not if you’re trying to prove another source of information is also fallible, that won’t fly. I’ll give you an example, I have two children, one named Science and one named Scripture (you like what I did there? ). I know that Science is prone to error, I know that not everything he says is true, and in fact I know that he’s changed his story hundreds of times over the years. As for Scripture, well he claims to never tell a lie, and his story has never changed through the years. Using only these two sources of information is it possible for me ever to prove the Scripture is lying based solely on what Science tells me? (For the record I do not have any children and I’d never name them Science and Scripture).

---

Regarded the bolded bit, the speed of light has been measured independently, both within and without Earth's atmosphere, many times - since the late 17th century, and within the margin of error for a particular experiment, the measurements are in agreement.

If you're suggesting that there is enough variability in the speed of light to allow for young earth claims, you're going to have to come up with some mechanism that would allow for the speed of light to increase by many orders of magnitude while staying coherent with all other observations.

Rotsa ruck with that one, GC.

P.S. There's a damn good reason why the speed of light has never been measured in a "true vacuum". Do you know why?

---

You’re overplaying your hand a bit; the one-way speed of light has never been empirically measured, it’s impossible to synchronize the clocks in order to do so.