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StAnastasia
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Right, And scientists exposed the hoaxes. So what? What is your point?
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StrawberryJam
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Science is willing and open and able to change existing theories that upon examination and more data, will change it’s view.
This is not possible for theists, but I will say this.
I am examining Geofermo’s position that nothing is contrary in what we do know, whith Christian claims.
I am impressed by the knowledge Geofermo has. He can beat many others in debate on these matters I have seen and been involved with on non theist sites.
His faith is not impoverished, nor less valid than any other Catholic. In fact, he is a gem amoung catholics.
He may have more faith than most Catholics for knowing the Pope’s Statement on Faith and Reason.
Distrust for the scientific community does not help the Catholic evangelism.
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Schn
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I suppose hoaxes destroy science in the same way that religious hoaxes destroy religion.
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StAnastasia
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Right. When a “scientist” perpetrates it disproves science. When a pedophile priest molests an altar boy it disproves the existence of God.
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StrawberryJam
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I think these are very wise words.
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geoformeo
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That’s why I believe it too. But the science verifies that belief, as it well should if it is true. Truth cannot contradict itself. God gave us divine revelation in the words of the Bible. God also gave us the natural world. The Church is the authority over scriptural interpretation, and science is the authority over matters of the natural world. But, because they have the same Source, they can never, EVER contradict each other.
Rather than being an adversary, science is faith’s wingman, and vice versa. That’s why the scientific method was developed under a Christian worldview.
Right you are in this matter. The buck stops with the Church in biblical matters, based upon the authority granted it by its Founder, our Lord Jesus. The Church will guide us inerrantly in matters of faith and morals. But we live in a physical world, and that is the other half of the equation. What we do in this world (as a product of our faith in morals) is based upon our knowledge of the physical world. Jesus teaches us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, aid the ill, comfort the hopeless. Do not the findings of science better enable us to do these things?
By the way, if you’re wondering how earth sciences plays into all of this, know that whatever is not grown is mined. Everything comes out of this beautiful Earth of ours: the metals, the jewels, the fuel, the building materials, etc. Even the type and amount of food that can be grown is dependent upon the soil type, landscape topography, climate and rainfall, geographical position, proximity to water and plate boundaries, and the like.
I’m sorry, but this is so ridiculous it is not even funny any more. This guy is saying that there have been negative numbers in radiometric age dates. This is not possible. If you understood how scientists date rocks, then you’d know that negative numbers in a radiometric age date are a mathematical impossibility.
I’ll try to be brief in explaining it here. Age dates are based upon half-lives, the time it takes for one half of one element to decay into another. Decay rates are known and have been documented repeatedly in the lab. They do not change, even with external changes in temperature, pressure, or chemistry. If you can measure the ratio between a parent element and a daughter product in a rock, and you know the half-life, you can calculate the age of the rock.
For instance: if a known half-life for element A to decay into element B was 50 million years, and if I found a rock that contained 25% element A and 75% element B, then I know 2 half-lives have past (1/4 (25%) is 1/2 of 1/2). Thus, the rock in question is 100 million years old. It is a simple concept. But based upon these calculations, even if you had a barely traceable parent element, that ratio is still multiplied by the half-life, always resulting in a positive value.
The wide range of radiometric ages is due to things being of drastically different ages! And there is not just one radiometric dating technique, there are dozens, all with different capabilities for dating. And the different techniques verify the dates of the others.
Finally, the precision of radiometric dating is actually quite astonishing. Most techniques give an accuracy of +/- 1 or 2 million years. Meaning that in my example above, the rock in question would be between 98 and 102 million years old. Given that that is a lot of years to account for, I’d say that is quite good. And do note that it does not leave room for an Earth that is 6,000 years old.
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geoformeo
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You’re kidding, right? Dinosaurs had a heyday, and were some of the most evolutionarily successful creatures ever to have walked the Earth. They dominated for 150 million years, that’s million with an M. How would they have “suffered” any more than any living thing today suffers?
Now if you’re addressing their demise, then you may have something there, though I don’t know if I call annihilation by an asteroid “suffering.” I would call it “time’s up,” just like it will be for humans at the end of the world. And now that I think of it, the K-T extinction would have been extremely similar to the end of times scenarios that Jesus describes in the Gospels. Sure makes a lot of sense to me.
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geoformeo
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S-Jam,
I appreciate the accolades, but am not deserving of them. There are far, far holier and wiser Catholics than I am. I merely humbly try to serve the Lord with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, and with all my strength. If what I post is encouraging or enlightening to you or any other, it is all for the glory of God. Thank you for your kind words.
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Schn
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If such parallels are to be drawn, it could be postulated that there was a Dinosaur Jesus. Is this true?
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Lost_Wanderer
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Ah I see. Okay, here’s another one.Does that answer your question sufficiently? Do you have any more?
Do you believe that Triceratops actually used its horns to fight or were they really all for display?
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Schn
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It is almost a certainty that they used horns to fight in addition to display. Simply because if there’s a weapon to be used, natural selection will favour those who use it.Ah I see. Okay, here’s another one.
Do you believe that Triceratops actually used its horns to fight or were they really all for display?
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redhen
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No, I don’t mean to say that dinosaurs were at the bottom of the food chain, and the poor things had a rough time. By suffering, I mean the pain inherent in any sentient being, i.e. any creature that has a nervous system.
You are quite right though, living beings today suffer in the same way as did dinosaurs and many other extinct beings. The nature of life on earth is that is “red in tooth and claw”. How does this square with an omnibenevolent God?
Given that homo sapiens sapiens has only been around for some 200,000 yrs, and dinosaurs were around for many millions of years, I could argue that their experience of pain, suffering, and death is greater than ours.
This shows the scope of such suffering. Not only does life on earth face tsunamis, earthquakes, fires, floods, drought, etc., but also comets and meteors slamming into the planet. There is strong evidence that such an event was also responsible for the demise of the last great land mammals; giant sloths, mammoths, etc.
“So far as we know beasts are incapable either of sin or of virtue; therefore they can neither deserve pain nor be improved by it.” C.S. Lewis
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Peter29
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please accept my apology i meant to address another user
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StAnastasia
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Excellent question, redhen. I tend to follow the theodicy of John Haught in Deeper than Darwin, who argues that rather than a creation sof “intelligent design,” we inhabit a creation of promise. God brings order our of chaos, life out of death, sentience out of life, mind our of sentience, and spirit out of mind. And this is all in the context of a competitive universe, a universe of finite resources. Suffering is inevitable, but it is transfigured by the Incarnation of the God who suffers along with the created order.
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StAnastasia
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If there were relics of undeniable dinosaur civilization, with dinosaur morality and spirituality, I would agree with you.
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Prieldedi
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Thanks for your words. What I have been trying to say all along is just my personal view of this issue and why I think the way I think. This topic deals with events scientists say happened from a range between 10,000 to 4.5 billions years ago. They talk as if they were present then and there and as if those things happened yesterday, as if you can just pickup a newspaper and check that what they say is true. When you listen to them they leave no margin for error, they can’t be wrong and they give their interpretations as fact, and that’s what I don’t feel comfortable with. A little humility on their part, acknowledging that they are at best guessing most of the time will be better.
I say, half jokingly, that here we are 47 years later and still no one is sure how many people shot at President Kennedy in Dallas in 1963, despite all the cameras, open microphones and witnesses on the scene. Science hasn’t been able to tell us if it was one, two, three or more shooters that day. All experts give different opinions and in the end all are actually “guessing” how many shooters were there that day.
Scientists on the other hand present events that apparently might have taken place millions of years ago as 100% fact and truth. Sorry to say it, but I can’t buy that. They might have a valid and acceptable explanation, but it’s not the truth.
Most of the scientists who have exposure to the mass media talk the same talk and walk the same walk. I’ve never seen a scientists saying he/she believes in God in any of the History Channel or NGS Channel programs, whatever the field of science the program is about. They never acknowledge the hand of God in the Universe, or say things like they are aghast as to why God created such big a Universe for us. Why the fear? We know Galileo, Newton, Copernico and countless more scientists before the 20th Century believed in God and openly said so. But today, the scientific community at large will ignore you if you openly say that you believe that God created the Universe, that man is a creation of God, etc. As a scientists, you’ll face being fired. Do you know what happens to teachers that say they don’t believe in the evolution? It’s the end of their careers. And these are facts unfortunately.
So I would turn 180 degrees what you say in the end: it’s scientists who distrust us believers even before we end up distrusting them. The powers that be behind most scientists want to destroy God from the mind of man. Christianity has had enemies in all ages, some out in the open, others hiding. Some using brute force, others using subtle methods. When you have 99% of the World population “believing” in a materialistic explanation of the Creation, then you’ll have 99% of the World population not believing in God. Perhaps if you visit Richard Dawkins’ webpage you’ll understand me better. [richarddawkins.net/]](http://richarddawkins.net/])
From his webpage:
Root of All Evil?: Nine months before the release of his million-copy bestseller The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins had the world buzzing with his television documentary Root of All Evil? The 2-hour program highlights the dangers of faith and religion in the 21st century, and asks people of reason to say “Enough is enough!”
The Enemies of Reason: There are two ways of looking at the world – through faith and superstition or through the rigours of logic, observation and evidence – in other words, through reason. Reason and a respect for evidence are precious commodities, the source of human progress and our safeguard against fundamentalists and those who profit from obscuring the truth. Yet, today, society appears to be retreating from reason.
To close I want to acknowledge that not all scientists are like Dawkins and his peers, but the pressure is huge on those who disagree with the godless community of scientists. It’s a battle and as a Christian I can’t pretend it’s not happening.
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StAnastasia
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Can you offer some examples of scientists presenting an event “as 100% fact and truth”?
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Prieldedi
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Watch the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, the National Geographic Channel, the Animal Planet Channel…
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StAnastasia
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Sure – I’ve watched those channels. Can you offer some examples of scientists presenting an event “as 100% fact and truth,” or are you just making that part up?
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Prieldedi
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It’s not like they are in class teachings us new truths and need to keep repeating “this is a true fact… this is a true fact”. No, they give it as a taken. It’s what they say and how they say it. Every time they talk about an animal, for example, the cheetah, the following phrase will be together with cheetah, “which has been evolving for the last (fill in the number) millions of years to reach the speed needed to… bla, bla, bla.”
They´ll say the same thing when talking about crocodiles, elephants, cats, rats, etc. Has evolution been proved? Or is it just an explanation of what could have happened?
If you believe evolution is a fact, no problem. But I think it is still a “THEORY”. To me it appears that evolution stopped at some point (if it ever started) because all the changes that evolution is supposed to do in animals and plants have not been observed by a human being not even once (mutation of a virus or micro organism is not evolution, the virus remains a virus after the mutation).
Evolutionists are very smart: they gave evolution some characteristics of God: great amounts of time (eternity?), invisibility, mystery, all powerful. Just like God, evolution cannot be seen. Just like God, evolution lives through millions of years. Just like God, evolution sheds enough light for some to see her and enough obscurity for others to miss her.
Scientists want us to believe in evolution, but when we ask them to believe in God (who has the same characteristics as I mentioned) they say we are superstitious!
Look, they don’t need anymore to say that what they say is true. People will believe in what they say. Why? Because scientists don’t lie. They are immune to those human traits… religious people sin, not them. They are infallible. So my friend, welcome to the new religion of the 21st Century…
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