Knowledge vs. Faith

[InSearchOfGod]

My understanding may be messed up when it comes to the terms knowledge and faith. It seems to me that everything we “know” is based on faith somewhere along the line. I see a computer monitor in front of me. I know it is there because I have faith in my eyes. How can one truly prove something if all proofs are based on unprovable axioms? Does this make sense?

People have told me that they can’t believe in God without proof. How can their ever be any proof if there is not some level of faith?

 

[svoboda]

InSearchOfGod:

My understanding may be messed up when it comes to the terms knowledge and faith. It seems to me that everything we “know” is based on faith somewhere along the line. I see a computer monitor in front of me. I know it is there because I have faith in my eyes. How can one truly prove something if all proofs are based on unprovable axioms? Does this make sense?

People have told me that they can’t believe in God without proof. How can their ever be any proof if there is not some level of faith?

Mathematical proofs are based on axioms. If (axioms), then (conclusion). Science is based on inductive reasoning, we observe the world around us, we make hypotheses, we verify, we correct our hypotheses etc.

But you bring up a very good point. What do we know, and how do we know it?

On a very fundamental level the only thing I am 100% sure of is that I exist. Descartes’ “I think therefore I am.” I don’t know whether you exist, my mind might be manufacturing you. I don’t know that the physical world exists, my mind might be manufacturing it as well. My subconscious could be the source of everything I experience. I cannot prove otherwise. (There is an entire philosophy about this: solipsism, if I am not mistaken.)

Even if the physical world and other people do exist, then everything I know about it and them still comes through the filter of my brain. I don’t experience the world, I experience what my brain makes of it: the perceptions. Can I trust them?

Can I trust my logical reasoning to answer these questions? Some thinkers have said that the human mind is not equipped to answer metaphysical questions.

To what extent can human logic be trusted? Modern physics pushes the boundaries of our logic, neither quantum mechanics nor general relativity make sense to us.

Are we arrogant in assuming we can figure things out? Dogs can’t learn physics, maybe we are fundamentally limited and will never be able to answer the big questions of this world.

There is a certain degree of faith, I have faith that other people are real and that the physical world exists, I don’t know this for a fact. I have faith that my reasoning is sound, otherwise I might as well lie down on the ground and give up on trying to figure anything out.

But you tell me whether this faith is the same kind of faith as believing that God became man in the womb of the Virgin Mary (who was later taken up into heaven body and soul).

 

[thistle]

Science is understanding the measurable.
Faith is believing the incomprehensible.

 

[InSearchOfGod]

Thanks for the replies!

Yes, I think it is solopsism that is the philosophy that the self is the only thing that can be truly known. Seems to me knowledge then is just profound faith based on empirical evidence and repeatability. For example, I know that if I drop my pen, it will fall on the floor, because it always falls on the floor.

But then again, there’s knowledge like 2 + 2 = 4… which is abstract. No one just has faith that 2 + 2 = 4; we all know it. Or do we? I think we do. I’m confusing myself.

 

[svoboda]

InSearchOfGod:

Thanks for the replies!

Yes, I think it is solopsism that is the philosophy that the self is the only thing that can be truly known. Seems to me knowledge then is just profound faith based on empirical evidence and repeatability. For example, I know that if I drop my pen, it will fall on the floor, because it always falls on the floor.

On a very basic level yes, I bet that’s why little kids are always dropping things, that’s how they learn.

But the amazing thing about us is that we’re able to devise theories that not only explain what we observe, but predict new things that can be verified by experiment. Why we’re able to do this is a mystery to me, maybe our very minds reflect the physical order of things because they themselves are the result of the workings of a complex physical machine.

They say the brain is a classical system, maybe that’s why classical physics and true or false type of logic makes sense to us, while quantum ideas no longer do.

I would be very interested to meet an extraterrestrial with a fundamentally different brain and see what it had to say about 2 + 2 = 4. Its abstract reasoning could be absolutely different for all we know.

 

[InSearchOfGod]

svoboda:

I would be very interested to meet an extraterrestrial with a fundamentally different brain and see what it had to say about 2 + 2 = 4. Its abstract reasoning could be absolutely different for all we know.

That would be interesting! Though we might not be able to communicate with each other very well. I wonder how abstractly animals can think. Surely a dog can’t understood 2 + 2, but a dogs can find a path around some obstacles to get to its master’s call.

According to wikipedia : Solipsism is an extreme form of skepticism, saying that nothing exists beyond oneself and one’s immediate experiences. Well, now, that sound just silly. It’s certainly a reality I (and just about everyone) believes exists.

Though I am sure there is much more to reality than we are capable of knowing.

Confusing stuff.

 

[Flopfoot]

From the CCC (hope this helps)

III. THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD ACCORDING TO THE CHURCH

**36 **"Our holy mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason."11 Without this capacity, man would not be able to welcome God’s revelation. Man has this capacity because he is created “in the image of God”.12

**37 **In the historical conditions in which he finds himself, however, man experiences many difficulties in coming to know God by the light of reason alone:

Though human reason is, strictly speaking, truly capable by its own natural power and light of attaining to a true and certain knowledge of the one personal God, who watches over and controls the world by his providence, and of the natural law written in our hearts by the Creator; yet there are many obstacles which prevent reason from the effective and fruitful use of this inborn faculty. For the truths that concern the relations between God and man wholly transcend the visible order of things, and, if they are translated into human action and influence it, they call for self-surrender and abnegation. The human mind, in its turn, is hampered in the attaining of such truths, not only by the impact of the senses and the imagination, but also by disordered appetites which are the consequences of original sin. So it happens that men in such matters easily persuade themselves that what they would not like to be true is false or at least doubtful.13

**38 **This is why man stands in need of being enlightened by God’s revelation, not only about those things that exceed his understanding, but also “about those religious and moral truths which of themselves are not beyond the grasp of human reason, so that even in the present condition of the human race, they can be known by all men with ease, with firm certainty and with no admixture of error”. 14

 

[InSearchOfGod]

Flopfoot, thanks for the post! How clueless of me not to look through CCC.

The book doesn’t seem to define “knowledge” though, does it? After all, if you have faith in something, it is easy to say you know it, and if you believe it exists, you must also believe it to be knowable. It would hypocritical (sp?) to say “Oh, I believe in God, but I don’t know whether or not He really exists” wouldn’t it? For then, what is the faith but a guess? And is faith based on a guess truly faith?

However, this also makes it possible for one to know wrong things. Therefore, the very act of knowing is not truly knowing. One child may say “oh, I know there is a monster in my closet” and he knows it because believes there is a monster in the closet because he believes the strange noises he hears at night are coming from the closet. Yet there is no monster, and boy knows something wrong. So is it possible for the boy to really know such a thing?

I believe I’m probably wrong about so many things. No, I know I am.

 

[svoboda]

That would be interesting! Though we might not be able to communicate with each other very well. I wonder how abstractly animals can think. Surely a dog can’t understood 2 + 2, but a dogs can find a path around some obstacles to get to its master’s call.

I would suggest watching documentaries of Jane Goodall’s research with chimpanzees. And similar documentaries of other apes. Apes have been taught sign languages, they definitely have some reasoning ability.

According to wikipedia : Solipsism is an extreme form of skepticism, saying that nothing exists beyond oneself and one’s immediate experiences. Well, now, that sound just silly. It’s certainly a reality I (and just about everyone) believes exists.

There was a time in my life when I took it seriously. I sought for ways to “prove” that anything but me was real. The best I came up with is that I didn’t consciously create the world, I don’t consciously control it, so even if my subconscious or something is manufacturing all this it is far more sophisticated than myself and might as well be as superior being

I think back in the day people took these types of philosophies far more seriously than we do now.

Though I am sure there is much more to reality than we are capable of knowing.

Confusing stuff.

I think so. I think we are sometimes too arrogant and think we can figure things out. Maybe on the cosmic scale we are no different from ants in our capacity to understand.

Then again, maybe we’re special. Maybe we’re the way the universe can become self aware.

It would be great if intelligent aliens were found, too bad it is unlikely

 

[svoboda]

InSearchOfGod:

The book doesn’t seem to define “knowledge” though, does it?

You might consider reading up on epistemology: the study of how we know things

After all, if you have faith in something, it is easy to say you know it, and if you believe it exists, you must also believe it to be knowable. It would hypocritical (sp?) to say “Oh, I believe in God, but I don’t know whether or not He really exists” wouldn’t it? For then, what is the faith but a guess? And is faith based on a guess truly faith?

It depends on the kind of faith. I have faith that you’re a real person, not something my subconscious is inventing for me here. I base it on my experience of many other human beings, the fact that they seem to be just as human as I am. I have faith that the physical world is real because of my experience of it, because of my lack of control over it etc.

I think you should look up the arguments for the existence of God. There are lots of them. Cosmological, contingency, moral conscience, free will, spiritual experience etc.

I think the strongest argument for the existence of God is the “uncaused first cause” (cosmological/contingency, I am not too good with the definitions) argument. We observe the world as a sequence of causes: why do I exist? My parents made me. Why do they exist, their parents made them. How did human beings came to be? Evolution. How did the earth form? Supernovae etc. How did the universe form? Big Bang. What caused the Big Bang? etc.

I think this chain has to stop somewhere. There has to be something that didn’t need to be brought into existence by something else. Maybe this something exists outside of time, eternally, and it makes no sense to ask what it was caused by.

To me that is God: the first cause that is the reason for existence, that sustains existence. Could it be a conscious being? Sure. We’re conscious beings, we have free will, we have a moral conscience. Might these derive from God the way all that exists derives from God? Sure.

But might God also be some timeless, necessarily existing multiverse? Sure.

I simply don’t know.

You might consider reading Paul Davies’ The Mind of God, he is a highly respected physicist (he won a prize that is kind of like the nobel prize for his work). It is a scientific way to look at God

For a Catholic perspective you might want to read Cardinal Newman’s the Grammar of Assent (I think, not too sure about the title). I am studying Newman now and he supposedly considered this issue from the Catholic perspective and wrote about it.

I believe I’m probably wrong about so many things. No, I know I am.

I bet we all are.

 

[mosher]

Socrates defined knowledge as a type of remembering. I don’t have faith that my computer screen is before me but rather I know it is in front of being because I can abstract it using the senses. All things in the natural world can be known at the very least through the senses. Spiritual beings are a different case but they are a natural result of reason.

BTW no animal has the ability to reason. Teaching a monkey to do sign language is not reasoning but rather it is a form of being able to express its reactive nature in another way.

 

[nico1089]

Hi–For me, faith is proof. If God didn’t exist, how could i have faith–since it is a gift.–nicolo

 

[svoboda]

mosher:

BTW no animal has the ability to reason. Teaching a monkey to do sign language is not reasoning but rather it is a form of being able to express its reactive nature in another way.

Apes in the wild have invented the hammer and anvil concept to crack nuts. It takes them a very long time to learn to do this, and they teach it to their offspring. (There was a documented scene where a little ape was trying to get the hang of it and couldn’t, his mother came up to him, took the tool and extremely slowly showed him the motion and the grip. Afterwards the little guy was repeating what his mother did.)

Some groups of apes have invented a way to get termites out of their nests and eat them. This is something they teach to the next generation. Not all groups of apes have figured this out, some haven’t.

In one group of chimps Goodall studied there was a deviant female chimp who would steal newborns from mothers and eat them with her older daughter. One time she attacked a mother who also had a young chimp (much smaller, so she couldnt’ fight back), the young chimp ran up to the observers, looked into their eyes and then looked back at the scene as though asking for help.

In one situation a blind woman came into the room with a chimp, the chimp covered her eyes with her hands and started running around the room as though trying to find out what it was like to be blind.

In one situation an ape approached one of those village-style things of getting water (pull a lever water comes out). He figured out how it worked through trial and error and drank the water.

Apes are nowhere near as intelligent as we are, true, but they definitely have some intelligence. Possibly self awareness. You should see their gestures, they kiss on the lips, sometimes a male chip will put his hand on the female chimp’s face. They reasusure each other through touch.

Their darker side is that chimps have wars, opposing clans will fight and sometimes there will be a lot of brutality in the way they kill each other. They rape. Sometimes they kill the litlte chimps.

–

In addition to this, our non-human ancestors such as Homo Erectus learned to use fire and had very sophisticated tools. Apes don’t make tools, they use things they find in nature as tools. Homo erectus shaped rocks into tools. Neaderthals had extremely sophisticated tools, not much worse that human contemporaries.

Neanderthals also buried their dead.

 

[RyanL]

svoboda:

I think you should look up the arguments for the existence of God. There are lots of them. Cosmological, contingency, moral conscience, free will, spiritual experience etc.

I think the strongest argument for the existence of God is the “uncaused first cause”…

I think svoboda hit the nail on the head.

Theology (and philosophy) may be just as empirical as science. There is a logical “proof” for assertions, just as there is a mathematical proof for the assertion that 2+2=4. This can be demonstrated with the classical method of major premise, minor premise, and conclusion.
Example:
Major premise: All people with 5 fingers have at least one hand
Minor premise: Karl has 5 fingers
Conclusion: Karl has at least one hand

The same thing can be done with the “first cause” argument:
MajP: All things which began to exist within time have a cause
M(name removed by moderator): The universe began to exist within time (Big Bang)
Conclusion: The universe has a cause

God (defined here simply as the one who caused the universe to come into being)is free to not have a cause because God didn’t began to exist within time - He is eternal, or “outside” of time.

As long as my premises are valid and my terms are not ambiguous (and I have not committed a logical fallacy), the conclusion is “proven” and disbelief is as silly as sticking your head in the sand.

Therefore, if my premises are valid and my terms are not ambiguous (I assure you there is no logical fallacy there), there is a God as certainly as 2+2=4. It’s logic. There are many other “proofs” of God, and you can get an introduction to them for free here (audio) or here (written and more expansive).

God Bless,
RyanL

 

[svoboda]

RyanL:

I think svoboda hit the nail on the head.

Theology (and philosophy) may be just as empirical as science. There is a logical “proof” for assertions, just as there is a mathematical proof for the assertion that 2+2=4. This can be demonstrated with the classical method of major premise, minor premise, and conclusion.
Example:
Major premise: All people with 5 fingers have at least one hand
Minor premise: Karl has 5 fingers
Conclusion: Karl has at least one hand

The same thing can be done with the “first cause” argument:
MajP: All things which began to exist within time have a cause
M(name removed by moderator): The universe began to exist within time (Big Bang)
Conclusion: The universe has a cause

God (defined here simply as the one who caused the universe to come into being)is free to not have a cause because God didn’t began to exist within time - He is eternal, or “outside” of time.

As long as my premises are valid and my terms are not ambiguous (and I have not committed a logical fallacy), the conclusion is “proven” and disbelief is as silly as sticking your head in the sand.

Therefore, if my premises are valid and my terms are not ambiguous (I assure you there is no logical fallacy there), there is a God as certainly as 2+2=4. It’s logic. There are many other “proofs” of God, and you can get an introduction to them for free here (audio) or here (written and more expansive).

God Bless,
RyanL

But there is one fundamental premise here that may or may not hold: that human beings and human logic is capable of reaching such lofty truths as the nature of God.

Human logic fails in modern physics, whether quantum mechanics or general relativity, it makes no sense to us. It could very well be that we are limited beings, that our logical ability is a function of the structure of our brain (limited), and that it will never be enough to discern fundamental truths about anything. Maybe on the cosmic scale all our achievements are no different from chimps cracking nuts.

Then agian, maybe not, maybe we are capable.

I am curious, but how do you argue from first cause to the Catholic God?

 

[RyanL]

You are correct that we are logically incapable of discovering the nature of God - the finite cannot fully know the infinite; for there to be real understanding, Divine revelation must be involved at least to some extent. I know know everything about an abstract - I can know the number 3, for example. I can manipulate it in my head, work with it, utilize it, and there is nothing more to know (this works with most pure ideas). I can know most things about a rock. I can know its chemical make-up, probable origin, method of composition, weight, size, etc., but I can’t know the history of a particular rock fully. I can know less about a dog, who requires some level of interaction for me to come to know it - most of the activity is on my side. With a person it’s about 50/50 for interaction based knowledge acquisition - they have to want to disclose things to me, and I have to want to interact to get good information. With God, it’s something like us and a snail - we can know about as much about God as a snail can know about us. In fact, it’s far worse than that, because again we’re talking about the finite and the infinite. If we are to know much of anything about God, it must be through His disclosing to us. We believe that God actually did this, and this is what we call Divine Revelation.

So in as much as our answers intersect, we agree.

svoboda:

I am curious, but how do you argue from first cause to the Catholic God?

Well, the first cause argument gets you to the existance of a God, who is not the universe and is distinct from the universe. This rules out pantheism. After this there are a myriad of directions in which to proceed - I try to tailor my responses to the particular objector. You can go to the nature of the infinite to rule out polytheism, you can go to moral values to prove the existance of objective moral absolutes, or if these are already accepted (and sometimes if they’re not) you can proceed to the truth claims of the Bible. You start by evaluating it as history and validate its strictly historical reliability - events, places, persons, etc. - you just have to make sure you’re reading history as history and allegory as allegory, as many objectors will try to trip you up with false truth-claims. From there you can go to the argument from miracles or straight to the argument for the divinity of Christ (classically expressed in the “Liar, Lunatic, or Lord” dilema). Once you get the divinity of Christ, you can see that He established one Church by again reading the Bible as strictly history (which includes taking into account contemporary writings, though it’s not strictly necessary), and can conclude with much certainty
that the Church Christ established was Catholic. After that, it’s pretty easy.

A decent introduction to a method of similar argument is called Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis. You can find it at most any library and nearly every bookstore - it’s the first book I would recommend after the Bible. It’s an introductory work, so it’s only about 150 pages long, but it’s an entertaining read that is philosophically and logically sound. Lewis, BTW, was an Anglican.

Other logical proofs of God, which demonstrate different things about Him, can be found at the links I linked to in my previous post - Dr. Kreeft is a professor of philosophy at Boston College, and is entertaining while being informative. I recommend stopping by his site (www.peterkreeft.com) and listening to some of his stuff - again, I would recommend this after C.S. Lewis.

God Bless,
RyanL

 

[svoboda]

RyanL:

the finite cannot fully know the infinite;

But my point is that our very arguments for the existence of God could be invalid. Do you think dogs can figure things out? I don’t. On the cosmic scale we might be no different.

Since all we experience of the universe are our perceptions, what our brain/mind makes of it, who is to say that our limited brain isn’t drastically oversimplifying something magnificent to make sense of it?

I bet the brains of apes oversimplify to an even greater degree. What is time anyway? General relativity tells us counterintuitive things about time. Maybe if we had better hardware (i.e. brains) we ourselves would see eternity and infinity so differently that the arguments we make now would be like apes’ attempts to crack nuts.

Well, the first cause argument gets you to the existance of a God

I wouldn’t agree. The first cause argument gets you an uncaused first cause. Who is to say that it’s not a timeless, eternally existing multiverse? Cosmologists are speculating about a multiverse in which many Big Bangs happen. If you decide to call an uncaused first cause God, then it gest you to the existence of God.

This rules out pantheism.

I disagree. The multiverse would include and give rise to universes such as ours, everything would still be a part of and in “God”.

you can go to moral values to prove the existance of objective moral absolutes

Tell that to Muslims and fundamentalist Mormons who see nothing wrong with polygamy. Tell that to past cultures who saw nothing wrong with human sacrifice. Tell that to people from the not-so-distant past who saw nothing wrong with slavery.

I think cultural and biological evolution do a much better job of explaining what we observe in terms of moral behavior in human beings than the idea of an “absolute morality.”

What makes you think that the Bible is historically reliable? I have read that there is no evidence for the enslavement of the Jews by the Egyptian, no evidence of the Exodus, no evidence of wadering in the desert, no evidence of some of the conquests etc. And this kind of evidence should be there, because events on that scale are expected to leave archeological evidence.

If you find this evidence, do present it. But for the sake of “intellectual honesty” study the other position as well.

The New Testament was written starting 50AD (Paul’s letters), the gospels were written from 70AD onward, 40 years after the death of Jesus for Mark on which Luke and Matthew are based. John was written even later.

There are no independent accounts of Jesus’ existence, the mention in Josephus is agreeed upon by nearly everyone to be an interpolation, and all the other sources are nearly 100 years too late to be first hand accounts. And even they are highly questionable in their mention of Jesus, and seem to attest more to the existence of Christians which no one doubts.

“Liar, Lunatic, or Lord” dilema).

or myth. I think there probably was a Jesus on whom the myth was based, but if you read the New Testament chronologically, and even if you read the gospels chronologically Mark, Matthew/Luke, John (written between 70AD and 100AD) you can see the myth evolve. There is no virgin birth in Mark, for instance, but Matthew and Luke have it etc. John is the latest and most theologically sophisticated gospel. Mark, the first gospel, doesn’t have Jesus’ early years, the original ending doesn’t even have the-post resurrection appearances. How often does Paul mention Jesus’ miracles or sayings? How often does Paul quote Jesus directly? Can you find at least one instance of this?

The Matthew passage where the Church is established is not replicated in nearly identical passages in Mark and Luke. Why? Paul doesn’t mention a Church established on Peter etc.Some believe the Matthew passage to be a later interpolation.

A decent introduction to a method of similar argument is called Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis. You can find it at most any library and nearly every bookstore - it’s the first book I would recommend after the Bible. It’s an introductory work, so it’s only about 150 pages long, but it’s an entertaining read that is philosophically and logically sound. Lewis, BTW, was an Anglican.

I’ve read this and several other of Lewis’ works.

Other logical proofs of God, which demonstrate different things about Him, can be found at the links I linked to in my previous post - Dr. Kreeft is a professor of philosophy at Boston College, and is entertaining while being informative. I recommend stopping by his site (www.peterkreeft.com) and listening to some of his stuff - again, I would recommend this after C.S. Lewis.

God Bless,
RyanL

I’ve read some of Kreeft’s articles too.

 

[vluvski]

This site is obviously biased, but at least you have a starting point to verify the archaeological artifacts it mentions.

christiananswers.net/archaeology/home.html

 

[svoboda]

vluvski:

This site is obviously biased, but at least you have a starting point to verify the archaeological artifacts it mentions.

christiananswers.net/archaeology/home.html

It is obviously biased, look at this:

Here are some headers that have about the FLOOD:

Some evangelical teachers today are claiming that Noah’s flood did not cover the entire Earth nor all the mountains of the day. Further, they claim that Noah and the animals floated on a shallow, temporary inland sea caused by the flood, somehow covering only the Mesopotamian region. Thus, they must claim that the Earth’s entire human population was limited to this area, or that not all humans were killed in the flood. Is there really biblical evidence for claims of this nature?
**
All The Mountains Were Covered. The tops of all the high mountains under the entire heavens were at least 20 feet beneath the waters surface (Genesis 7:19-20). It would be absurd to think that a flood covering the highest mountains of the Middle East would not affect the rest of the world. ** In addition, the waters remained at this awesome, mountain-covering height for five months! (Genesis 7:18-24, 8:1-5).

**The Ark Was Huge. The ark was necessary to prevent the extinction of humans and animals. If the Flood were merely local, God could have sent them to a safer part of the world. God warned Noah about the Flood 120 years prior to its start. ** Surely, Noah and his family could have traveled a great distance in that time. Also, if the Flood was local, the ark was unnecessarily large. Until the first metal ships were constructed in modern times, the ark was the largest ship ever built. It was big enough to house representative pairs of every created-kind of air-breathing, land animal on Earth.
**
The Bible specifically teaches that the Flood of Noah’s time was global in extent and that all air-breathing, land animals and all humans were killed, except those saved in the Ark. How could the Bible be any more clear concerning the global nature of the Flood?! ** Or, if this was actually a local flood, how could the Bible have been any more misleading about its extent?!

christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c005.html

There is no scientific evidence of this, and a worldwide flood would have left evidence.

Here is something else, which as a chemical engineer you will surely laugh at:

Scores of distinguished scientists have carefully examined the most basic laws of nature to see if Evolution is physically possible - given enough time and opportunity. The conclusion of many is that Evolution is simply not feasible. One major problem is the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

**Naturalistic Evolutionism requires that physical laws and atoms organize themselves into increasingly complex and beneficial, ordered arrangements.6 Thus, over eons of time, billions of things are supposed to have developed upward, becoming more orderly and complex.7

However, this basic law of science (2nd Law of Thermodynamics) reveals the exact opposite**. In the long run, complex, ordered arrangements actually tend to become simpler and more disorderly with time. There is an irreversible downward trend ultimately at work throughout the universe. Evolution, with its ever increasing order and complexity, appears impossible in the natural world.

christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-thermodynamics.html

You can’t possibly expect me to take anything they say seriously, they haven’t even bothered to find out that the second law applies to closed systems, and we have a giant (name removed by moderator)ut of energy from the sun. And that the increase in entropy from the nuclear fusion in the sun far overcomes any decreases we accomplish here.

If these people misrepresented the 2nd law of thermodymamics, why should I trust anything they say about archeology. They are either deliberately deceptive, or they are not doing their research.

Archeology is far more subjective than physics, and these people have proven themselves unable to accurately present something as basic as the second law of thermodynamics

Try again with the evidences

 

[svoboda]

Got a bit passionate in my post there, but you know, that sort of thing really angers me and here is why:

I saw a segment of CNN about how litlte kids were brought to a museum by creationists to be told how dinosaurs never existed and how it was all made up (or something along those lines). Their tour guide then pointed at an empty space on the wall and said “this is the evidence for evolution.”

Those kids don’t have the critical thinking necessary to discard that kind of . What they are doing is brainwashing that is harming people. People are denied truth.

It is also harming society, because believe me, while Americans are arguing about whether evolution should be removed from the curruculum Japanese are building human-like robots and the Chinese are working to build a base on the moon.