Just how old is the earth, anyway? September 22, 2007
Posted by Evil Bender in Origins, Religion, Science, wingnuts.trackback
Our friend Rand’s most recent post has managed to be more than usually offensive, and so I must respond. It’s full of his usual: his weekly harassing of strangers, attempting to tell them they’re going to hell if they don’t share every point of his doctrine, hating them and calling it love. But this time he added bad science to the mix:
The other man then took up the fight his friend had started claiming that it was proven that the world was millions of years old so my faith in the Bible was ludicrous. I asked him what he did for a living and he, after a long pause, said he was a geologist (an obvious lie). I then told him I was a biologist/biochemist and that I had not seen this irrefutable proof that the Earth was indeed millions of years old.
Rand can’t bring himself to claim the evidence supports a young Earth–since it clearly does not–but he does move the goalposts, demanding “irrefutable evidence” when he knows damn well he wouldn’t accept any evidence but what he thinks the Bible says.
If Rand is a scientist as he claims he is either a) keeping himself willfully ignorant about the true age of the earth, or b) refusing to admit what the evidence says. Either way, for his sake I hope he conducts himself with more rigor and honesty in his work than he does when his faith in in conflict with reason.
To test Rand’s intellectual honesty, I will ask one question. If he can answer it in a way which does not appeal to mysticism or the unknown, I will retract my above words:
Rand, if the Bible is inerrant, why does it claim that bats are birds, pi = 3, and that hares chew their cud?
I wish Rand had the honesty to admit that he doesn’t care about the evidence, for when it conflicts with his preconceived notions, he will reject that evidence. Then at least he could honestly answer the above question. But I’m not holding my breath.
Did you ask the question as a comment on his blog? It doesn’t show up if you did.
“I wish Rand had the honesty to admit that he doesn’t care about the evidence, for when it conflicts with his preconceived notions, he will reject that evidence. Then at least he could honestly answer the above question. But I’m not holding my breath”
Hilarious statement, considering you parrot these “Bible errors” without ever having spent any quality time studying God’s Evidence, His Bible. I guess it is true what they say: “Hypocrites see hyprocrisy everywhere except in themselves.”
I thought long and hard before commenting here. There is a duelism in the book of Proverbs concerning answering a fool. It could be profitable (Proverbs 26:4), and can also be quite unprofitable (Proverbs 26:5); but since you ask me ONE question (which is actually THREE questions), here goes…
(have fun with this all you want you poor, sad soul… just try to remember before you whine, YOU asked ME… “I” am the one who is quite at ease with not having anything to do with “you”… “you” are the one obsessively out to show “your superiority”)
-the bat/bird nonsense:
http://www.carm.org/diff/Lev_11_19.htm
-the pi=3 nonsense:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v17/i2/pi.asp
-the hare nonsense:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v20/i4/rabbits.asp
I don’t honestly expect you to actually read or consider the above articles… but who knows what the Lord can do…
Repent and believe on the Gospel of Jesus.
Rand
ps: it is also noteworthy that while you claim I harassed poor souls, you make no mention that I was the one who was mocked, cursed at, and nearly beaten (yeah… yeah… I know… I must have it coming). Your hypocrisy is worthy of a position on network news.
“If he can answer it in a way which does not appeal to mysticism or the unknown, I will retract my above words.”
Oh… I guess I won’t be holding my breath.
;-)
Rand
[...] Responding to Rand September 23, 2007 Posted by Evil Bender in Religion, Science, wingnuts. trackback This post is in response to Rand’s comment. [...]
I answer your comment more fully in an above post, Rand. One thing that didn’t fit in up there: I was raised as an evangelical, inerrant-Bible Christian. I’ve spent a great deal of time, both when I called myself a Christian and after I rejected Christianity, studying the Bible and commentary on it.
It might be to your benefit to stop with the ad hominem attacks. You used that you are a biologist (not the field concerned with the age of the earth, as you well know) to dodge the question about why you think the earth is young. Now you’re assuming I don’t know anything about the Bible, because it’s easier to dismiss me as a heathen than it is to face facts.
Rand,
I find it odd that you accuse the author of not studying the Bible. Unless you know him personally or have discussed this in the past, this is a telling assumption on your part. Regardless, let me assure that many (most?) of us freethinkers and atheists have indeed studied the Bible and, truth tell, that’s why we aren’t Christians. For myself, the Bible is the very thing that destroyed my faith and convinced (convicted?) me to leave my born-again Christianity and instead embrace evidence-based reasoning.
Your “evidences” are illogical and intentionally disingenuous, as one would expect from the sources. The bird issue for example:
The Bible is not a science book. True of course. But you can’t make excuses for the Bible here by blaming the ignorance of the ancients that wrote it and then turn around and claim it perfect in every way. Either it is perfect regardless of the ignorance of the authors or it isn’t. The same excuses could be made for their ignorance in regards to the age of the Earth for example.
The bit about the lagomorphs eating their cud is one of the finest examples of disassembling I’ve ever read. The bible states quite plainly and literally that rabbits chew their cud. In reality they do not. They re-ingest droppings that have passed completely through their guts and out the other end. In this case, the Bible cannot be taken literally. You have to interpret and twist to make it fit what we know to be true.
In the end, these apologetics makes sense only if you begin with ‘X is correct no matter what, let us find proofs that support it and discard any others.’ If you approach the issue with an unbiased attitude you see them for the desperate and thin attempts at deception that they are. If the Bible was the perfect words of a perfect being they should contain no error and we should have no need of these excruciating contortions to justify apparent errors. In fact, one would assume that this perfect text would include some insights that were not known to the bronze-age nomads who wrote them. But what we find is exactly what one would expect to find if it is in fact a collection of oral traditions passed down by superstitious nomads trying to make sense of their world in the best way they could, translated dozens of times by various individuals and groups, each with their own agendas.
Butch
Blog Wars!
I find it even more damning that someone who claims to be a scientist makes these types of claims. Rand, who should have been better educated on the subject, denying said education speaks volumes on his character. Lying for Jesus, while not uncommon, sure does not speak well of the liar or the religion.
Yikes. Just reading some of the drivel over at UD and master moron DaveScot isn’t convinced that YEC is wrong.
Read that comment and prepare to duck the moving goal posts.
A firm “indeed” to all you said, EB; I just wanted to add the following (emphasis added):
No, simple drinking to excess, leading to the state of being drunk, is not a disease. However, alcoholism is indeed a disease (addiction has both psychological and physical aspects), and anyone who has studied human biology ought to know that. It’d be one thing to call alcoholism a punishment from god for sinful behavior, just as they do with AIDS, but to imply that it isn’t a disease at all reeks of intellectual dishonesty.
Then again, I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me.
Just how old is the Earth, anyway ? 4 600 million years, give or take a few. And yes, I am a geologist.
I just can’t sympathise this ridiculous obsession with somehow trying to assert the literal truth of the Bible. That’s just completely barmy, and it misses the point entirely.
So what if not every single word in the Bible is entirely true ? It was written quite some time ago, before we had even remotely begun to investigate the world around us.
Given its antiquity and the limited state of scientific understanding at the time, we should hardly expect the Bible to be entirely accurate as a manual of planetary physics and genetics. And insisting on such a narrow and ill-founded view will sadly only serve to undermine the undoubted wider merits of the book entirely.
One of my best friends is a vicar. And he’s a geologist, too. Frankly, there’s no conflict here. Move along. Next, please.
Given its antiquity and the limited state of scientific understanding at the time, we should hardly expect the Bible to be entirely accurate as a manual of planetary physics and genetics. A
Ok granted, of course the bible wouldn’t be a scientific manual. It was written by a vastly distributed group of goat herders, farmers, etc.. By uneducated men who wrote this down years after the alleged events. If it was the word of some god it surely would be more accurate. Instead it’s just some stories collected by men trying to explain things around them. There’s no god involved. Or is he just lazy?
[...] Whenever I lost points on a test due to a wrong answer, I could have argued, for example, that pi=3, and moved on with my [...]