A 6 Day Creation

[JoeyKnothead]

From Post 961 here:

There is now more evidence than ever before about 6-day creation.

For debate:

Please offer evidence for a literal six day creation of the Universe.

Please remember that in this section of the site the Bible is not considered authoritative.

[Jose Fly]

I never said I "merely" assumed anything

Pay closer attention to the discussion. I specifically asked "But that's all merely an assumption, correct" and you answered "Yes".

Nor is what I say the result of a desperation to deny anything, I have stated the truth we all build a worldview based on assumptions and yours are no more free of this than mine.

That's not how I see it. The only times I ever see folks regularly invoke solipsism/last Thursdayism are when creationists do so as a means to wave away inconvenient facts. In this case it was in response to the fact that oil companies utilize old earth/evolutionary models to locate fossil fuel deposits. First you tried the goofy rebuttal of "Yeah but fossil fuels are bad" before eventually landing on "Yeah but how do you know the gods didn't just make it seem that way".

Let me paraphrase what you said to help you see the futility:

Again, it's fascinating to see how, in their desperation to deny God as creator of things, materialists are willing to put everything they believe into the "merely assumptions" bin.

You'd have a point if I ever invoked anything like solipsism/last Thursdayism. Since I haven't.......

The problem faced by the atheists is that they are only able to see the world through the blinkered spectacles of materialism, the very devotion to science actually prevents them from seeing much more, they see only what they allow themselves to see and miss everything else, they filter out God and then sarcastically ask "OK, so tell me, where is this God then?"

Thanks for demonstrating that this is primarily a religious issue for you.

[Sherlock Holmes]

I never said I "merely" assumed anything

Pay closer attention to the discussion. I specifically asked "But that's all merely an assumption, correct" and you answered "Yes".

Nor is what I say the result of a desperation to deny anything, I have stated the truth we all build a worldview based on assumptions and yours are no more free of this than mine.

That's not how I see it. The only times I ever see folks regularly invoke solipsism/last Thursdayism are when creationists do so as a means to wave away inconvenient facts. In this case it was in response to the fact that oil companies utilize old earth/evolutionary models to locate fossil fuel deposits. First you tried the goofy rebuttal of "Yeah but fossil fuels are bad" before eventually landing on "Yeah but how do you know the gods didn't just make it seem that way".

Let me paraphrase what you said to help you see the futility:

Again, it's fascinating to see how, in their desperation to deny God as creator of things, materialists are willing to put everything they believe into the "merely assumptions" bin.

You'd have a point if I ever invoked anything like solipsism/last Thursdayism. Since I haven't.......

The problem faced by the atheists is that they are only able to see the world through the blinkered spectacles of materialism, the very devotion to science actually prevents them from seeing much more, they see only what they allow themselves to see and miss everything else, they filter out God and then sarcastically ask "OK, so tell me, where is this God then?"

Thanks for demonstrating that this is primarily a religious issue for you.

There are several inaccuracies in what you say above.

First I have not invoked solipsism, but even if I had your personal distaste toward it does not serve to invalidate it as rational worldview.

Second fossils fuels were described by as you as "useful" I pointed out that this is purely a matter of perspective, so far as climate change goes they are not useful unless destruction of the biosphere is a desirable objective for you.

Third I assert that you are intellectually incapable of distinguishing between a world that's billions of years old and a recently created world that looks to a scientist as though it's billions of years old, I thought we'd agreed on this, if that's not the case just explain how you can distinguish.

Fourth you wrote "You'd have a point if I ever invoked anything like solipsism" you did not invoke it nor did I say you had.

Fifth this is not a religious issue, it is hard reality, epistemology, and a science education will not equip you for this kind of discussion, science is of little help here. Because it's not a science discussion you assume it must be religious, again this is all because you are not well versed in the subject matter and can only see things through the blinkers of science. You have chosen to assume certain things and want to give the impression that you have not. You want your claims about the world to be regarded as superior to my claims yet as I've shown you, you cannot hope to do that because you have merely chosen to assume uniformitarianism. Like so many science devotees you want to claim (or perhaps you actually truly believe) objective knowledge while basing it all on a subjective assumption.

You've built a house on sand and one day this fact will become apparent.

[Jose Fly]

First I have not invoked solipsism, but even if I had your personal distaste toward it does not serve to invalidate it as rational worldview.

Yeah you did. You invoked the notion that we cannot truly know anything because the gods may be manipulating things to make them seem different than they appear. And when I pointed out that could apply to everything (not just the age of the earth), you agreed.

Second fossils fuels were described by as you as "useful"

Again, pay better attention. I said the methods used to find them are useful.

Third I assert that you are intellectually incapable of distinguishing between a world that's billions of years old and a recently created world that looks to a scientist as though it's billions of years old, I thought we'd agreed on this, if that's not the case just explain how you can distinguish.

Thus solipsism/last Thursdayism.

Fourth you wrote "You'd have a point if I ever invoked anything like solipsism" you did not invoke it nor did I say you had.

Then you had no point.

Fifth this is not a religious issue

LOL.....seriously? You've brought up gods, atheism, materialism....and now you say it's not a religious issue? Utterly bizarre.

Because it's not a science discussion you assume it must be religious

Utterly bizarre. I conclude it's religious because you bring in gods and religious concepts.

You have chosen to assume certain things and want to give the impression that you have not.

Again, please try and keep track of things. We've been over this before and I said back then that....yes, I do assume that our observations reflect reality and that there is no magical deception going on. We all make that assumption in everything we do.

You want your claims about the world to be regarded as superior to my claims yet as I've shown you, you cannot hope to do that because you have merely chosen to assume uniformitarianism. Like so many science devotees you want to claim (or perhaps you actually truly believe) objective knowledge while basing it all on a subjective assumption.

You've built a house on sand and one day this fact will become apparent.

Like I said, if you want to fall back on solipsism/last Thursdayism as a means to wave away or minimize the practical results of science, be my guest. But if you were at all consistent, you'd apply that to yourself, your life, and everything you think you know. Yet somehow I doubt you do, and instead this is merely a defensive mechanism for dealing with inconvenient facts (when the facts are against you, the last resort is to argue that there are no facts).

It's interesting because usually Christians like to assert that there are "absolute truths", but here you are basically arguing that we can never really know anything to be true. As I keep saying.....it's fascinating to watch.

[Diagoras]

The situation as I see it is that we each choose on what to base our world views, we each have reasons for that choice, we each perhaps looks for the world view that has the most explanatory power,

<bolding mine>

Agreed. However, we likely test that 'explanatory power' in different ways, which is where the real difference lies.

I think "God" explains more than "Not God". That is in the overall scope of what I see around me, not just the physical universe

One of the dreams of science is a 'Grand Unified Theory' that fully explains every known force in the universe. We've not achieved that yet.

However, science has made amazing progress over a comparatively short amount of time in its attempts to explain any number of individual, detailed observations in the natural world. Perhaps you'd agree that when we focus our world view on the tiny details, it's the scientific world view that has the most explanatory power, but that it becomes increasingly harder to explain 'the overall scope' the further we 'zoom out'.

humans, killing, lying, selfishness, imminent destruction of the planet, torture, brutality and so on all of these things make no sense (or are very hard to comprehend) in a universe without God, without right and wrong, in my opinion anyway.

<bolding mine>

I'm perplexed. Did you mean to write that? It sounds like you are saying something like. "It's hard to comprehend that evil would exist in a universe without God."

Following the logic:

God is the source of human morals;
Killing and torture are behaviours consistent with those humans who have no morals;
A world without God would have no human morals;
We observe killing, torture, etc. in the world;

Therefore it makes more sense that we live in a universe without God.

Surely?

[brunumb]

[Replying to Jose Fly in post #110]

So a global flood that lasted a year....the most tumultuous and extreme flooding event in the earth's history.....somehow managed to produce pure, finely-sorted layers of microfossils? All that churning and tectonic upheaval was simultaneous with the calm and consistent conditions necessary to produce these deposits?

How would such a high purity of chalk be produced over millions of years? That is a problem with your deep time theory.
How would live animals be trapped in the chalk if it took millions of years to accumulate? This is another problem with your deep time theory.

You didn't address the problem of pure, finely-sorted layers of microfossils forming in one of the most tumultuous and extreme flooding event in the earth's history.

[brunumb]

Prior to my conversion I can see that I tricked myself, I willingly and willfully chose to interpret the world in a way I wanted it to be. I wanted it to be Godless, I wanted to believe in a Star Trek like future, where we look forward to a wonderful future brought to us by science and technology, that desire was what drove my choice - it was a choice too, even if that wasn't clear to me at the time.

I really don't understand that. Why would anyone want the world to be godless? I actually want there to be a loving, caring God who will grant me life after death and the prospect of meeting loved ones again and living in peace and harmony. Who wouldn't? But, unfortunately, despite what I would prefer my brain has rejected all of that based on everything it has experienced so far. It is most definitely nothing to do with choice. Belief is NOT a matter of choice. We are either convinced that something is true or we are not.

[brunumb]

In 2008 it reported a group of Russian and Ukrainian scientists say that oil and gas don't come from fossils; they're synthesized deep within the earth's mantle by heat, pressure, and other purely chemical means, before gradually rising to the surface.

Given that oil and gas are predominantly mixtures of organic hydrocarbons, compounds of carbon and hydrogen, from what materials do these scientists propose that these hydrocarbons are synthesised. Our current understanding is that oil and natural gas are formed from organic matter from dead plants and animals by processes not that much different from what they are proposing actually.

[Tcg]

Prior to my conversion I can see that I tricked myself, I willingly and willfully chose to interpret the world in a way I wanted it to be. I wanted it to be Godless, I wanted to believe in a Star Trek like future, where we look forward to a wonderful future brought to us by science and technology, that desire was what drove my choice - it was a choice too, even if that wasn't clear to me at the time.

I really don't understand that. Why would anyone want the world to be godless? I actually want there to be a loving, caring God who will grant me life after death and the prospect of meeting loved ones again and living in peace and harmony. Who wouldn't? But, unfortunately, despite what I would prefer my brain has rejected all of that based on everything it has experienced so far. It is most definitely nothing to do with choice. Belief is NOT a matter of choice. We are either convinced that something is true or we are not.

I agree. I couldn't possibly choose to belief in god/gods. Once I examined the claims of theism and most specifically Christianity and saw that they don't add up, I couldn't continue to believe in God. The kicker was beginning to see the function specific beliefs play. For instance, the belief in an afterlife help humans avoid the reality that death is final. Is there any evidence of an afterlife? None. Is there any evidence humans fear death? Plenty.


Tcg

[Diagoras]

You've built a house on sand and one day this fact will become apparent.

(As an aside, I'd imagined this being said in something like the voice of the Wicked Witch of the West...)

The 'sand' in this case, being uniformitarianism. How will this fact then 'become apparent', when you're making the case that we're

incapable of distinguishing between a world that's billions of years old and a recently created world that looks to a scientist as though it's billions of years old

Will this be because we'll see evidence of physical laws and forces changing, God will reveal himself, or something else?

And, to try and steer back to the OP, do you believe this 'big reveal' will be consistent with a six-day creation account?

[brunumb]

Has anyone presented any evidence yet confirming the 6-day creation account in the Bible? All we seem to get are questions flung around attempting to challenge the age of the earth.

I'm rather bemused by this notion that God might have created the universe, including the earth, around six thousand years ago but gave everything the appearance of being billions of years old. I know God is supposed to work in mysterious ways, but that one just boggles the mind. What possible reason could there be for it? I know, I know. Not having an answer doesn't mean there was no reason, but you've really got to wonder. Take God out of the picture and we're left with desperation on the part of believers. It works for me.