Hermeneutics.

I never said that I believed that it was a metaphor. Some parts of the bible are more clearly metaphoric than others. It all depends on the context. And if it was written to be a metaphor, then it is taking the bible to mean what it says.

If the bible says "love the lord your God with all your heart", that does not mean that you are some how supposed to incorporate the muscle that pumps blood through your body. Like maybe eating human hearts. That would be a good literal way to interpret the bible.

But instead I take a passage like this to mean what it says, love your God with all of your being and everything that you have in every way that you can.

I think if you start to read over some of your own posts on this forum Jib you will start to lose faith.

I am definite I could argue along side you that Christianity is the wonderful answer to all the worlds problems and that the Bible really is the word of God(I think in some areas of discussion I may be able to strengthen your positions).

What I could not do is read over and analyse my posts critically while maintaining any real feeling of self-respect or integrity. I am not trying to patronise you but Maybe take a bit of time to review your posts (like hands after a session) and you will begin to see the leaps in logic and inconsistencies in your arguments that I (and others) get to see clearly every time I read these threads.

wow....just....wow....

I, for one, am predisposed to believe that carbon dating is inaccurate.

FYP and LDO.

Try Radiometric Dating

Well, the oldest fossil of a modern human has been dated to 160,000 years ago. (And there is evidence that our species is about 250,000 years old, but I'll agree to 160,000 years for the sake of argument.) That doesn't agree with the often cited Biblical genealogy of 6,000 years from the first humans to the present.

How do you reconcile that? Yes, I'm asking a different question than the OP.

Carbon dating, or radiocarbon dating is just a type of radiometric dating. You have dating that is based on a known rate of decay which has never been observed beyond relatively short rates of time and that is based on staying within a given set of parameters for the entire length of its existence.

Also, radiometric dating is believed to have severe limits in terms of time...under 50,000 years.

Science, thankfully, is based on prediction rather than observation. However, observation is like collecting puzzle pieces. When you take puzzle pieces and fit them together in a certain way, and they achieve photographic resolution and crystal clarity, it's generally safe to consider the puzzle solved.

Of course, if you can find some other way to fit the data together, you will definitely be taken seriously. Just be sure your model accounts for geological, astronomical, chemical, physical, meteorological, and biological data, and ties all the disparate observations together into a single whole. Then make sure the predictions you make about future observations that are always accurate. Once you do that, I can promise you two things will happen: First, you will shake the earth with the power of your revelation, and much of science will break away to follow your ideas. Second, you will no longer be able to casually dismiss the successful completion of such a task.

The nature of radioactive decay affects all of the natural sciences. If we're wrong about it, then our predictions in all of the sciences would also be erroneous. As would the mathematical methods used to determine those predictions.

No qualified chemist or physicist believes this. It is certainly "believed," by a number of gullible people without the benefit of an education. Many elements have radioactive half-lives into the billions of years.

It's funny that I often try to use the same argument for religion and it doesn't fly.

If a psychic has a 100% prediction rate over, say 40 years, should we take that to mean all of the predictions to be fulfilled in the future will be correct?

Going back to science, you can't prove that predictions are always accurate. The scientific consensus about elements of the cosmos has been overturned and rewritten umpteen times over the past century alone.

Yes, that is the point.



No, because the prerequisite to being "qualified" is heavy indoctrination into the belief that this is correct. Like you said, the gatekeepers could never allow this to be overturned or else the entire system is based on it. Unfortunately, that means that personal and group interests would trump truth if this were seriously questioned.

What is education? Might it largely consist of learning and accepting so-called "facts?"

Prove it.

Secondly, what if a radioactive cluster of material was in existence prior to the formation of the earth?

Even if the dating is correct, then your cluster would tell us nothing about the age of the earth, only about the age of the cluster.

The "system" is based on observation and review and testing by peers. It's not religion where a person tells you what to believe and you accept it.

Your entire post is one big paranoid delusion of epic levels. See a doctor.

In the story of Genesis God expelled Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden. After being expelled from this garden Adam and Eve had to copulate – a lot. However herein lies a problem. If we begin off with a population of two, we have started with a population bottleneck.

Since all males must have came from Adams’ Y-chromosome, we should be able to find evidence for this in human DNA. Similarly, with the X-chromosome we only started off with two x-chromosomes- Adams’ and Eve’s and thus we must be able to find evidence for this.

However when we look at the DNA we find some problems firstly using the number of variations (I can’t remember how this is calculated, I think a variation occurs once every 20,000 years) We get some problems:

Data is all from female mitochondrial DNA:
Haplogroup U is approximately 55,000 years old
Haplogroup X is approximately 30,000 years old
Haplogroup V is approximately 12,000 years old
Haplogroup T is approximately 10,000 years old
Haplogroup K is approximately 12,000 years old
Haplogroup J is approximately 45,000 years old

Using the dates in the bible we can approximate the earth to being 6,000 years old, however the genetic evidence does not back this up. However, there is a much darker side to the Genesis story and that comes from starting off with a genetic bottleneck.

All of the children of Adam and Eve must have interbred. A lot. The results of inbreeding are awful. Recessive genes become more numerous and this leads to a number of problems.

reduced fertility
increased genetic disorders
fluctuating facial asymmetry
lower birth rate
higher infant mortality
slower growth rate
smaller adult size
loss of immune system function.

Basically the human race would never have got a foothold and being unable to have children, at least with the ability to survive infection. All of Adam and Eves decedents would have died along time ago.

You forgot the nephilim, though. That's not a small problem in your theory.

Could you please explain your response.

There was interbreeding in Genesis, Chapter 6...very early on in the game. Also, the question must be answered about who Cain's father was which, of course, was even earlier.

The nephilim is a race of supposed angels that populated the earth.

Interestingly a blurry photograph of a skeleton is considered valid evidence of their existence, whereas about 5 million peer reviewed articles (which is probably a low estimate) on physics, geology, biology and astrophysics is nothing but indoctrination.

To my knowledge, scientists haven't broached the topic and there are no peer-reviewed articles that go one way or another. I'm not sure what you're talking about.

How does a myth about giants have anything to do with my post about genetics? And do you actually believe in them?

You shoot down tens of millions of scientifc articles in sweeping generalization, yet you accept the existence of the nephilim without any fuzz and even some dubious photograph of weird skulls shown to be something else entirely is accepted without further questioning.

Yeah....

Did you read? The Bible is clear that not everyone was a direct descendant of both Adam and Eve. Your genetic theory is based on Adam and Eve only.

I accept nephilim without any fuzz; not the photograph.

If he's 100% honest? Yes, that should be your default position, until presented with evidence to the contrary. At least if you believe the sun will rise tomorrow. The problem of induction is troubling, but we can't live in the world without making us of induction.

The core consensus hasn't changed since Mendeleev. It's never been "overturned" in a broad sense.

That all science is unreliable? You realize that the computer you're using was constructed based on these principles?

There's very little indoctrination in the natural sciences.

No, it consists of learning processes and techniques, as well as how to apply them. Only the most basic classes deal in "facts," science deals in models and science students are constantly cautioned that what they think they know is probably wrong, and what they're being taught is definitely wrong, so take it with a grain of salt.

Relatively easy to do, but too expensive and time-consuming to bother with thanks. What do you want, a video of me measuring out isotopes and explaining how to integrate a rate law?

Dating is based on proportions of different elements and the isotopes that constitute their samples. The "chunk" being measured is the earth itself - these isotopes are scattered throughout its crust. The simplest form of aging is simply noting that isotopes with 8-billion-year (and above) half-lives are still around, while isotopes with 4-billion-year (and above) half-lives are nowhere to be found. Proportions identified also match what we expect given the relevant half-lives and independent speculation about the initial composition of the earth.

WATTTTTT?

Why does this not make sense?

Especially given that god asks christians to dedicate their lives to him, is it so unreasonable for god to require the christian movement to constantly reanalyse the original message

The ability to predict things short-term often has little to no correlation to long-term predictability.