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Genesis vs Evoluion

Started by GBTG, November 02, 2017, 01:46:49 PM

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GBTG

#15
I specifically came to the religious section of an atheist forum for two reasons, the first being that there is one... If you don't want to participate or entertain a believer like myself why does this exist? Second, I came to this forum because, as far as I can tell atheists in general are more open minded than many religious people whom attend church every Sunday. As this is a religious topic the Bible is obviously going to come up.

The Bible is only as accurate as the understanding of the person reading said Bible allows. If one reads with presumptions and bias, wrong conclusions may be inferred though the information is accurate. I was extremely guilty of this as both a non-believer and now Christian.

What if the first book in the Bible Genesis, was or has been read incorrectly for many years. The catholic church and many biblical scholars had egg on their face due to Copernicus for the very same reason. What if the first book of Genesis in the Bible literally described in order these events?

1. Space (the vacuum of the universe)
2. Pre-Atomic particles (strings)
3. Polarities (+/-)
4. Nuclear fusion (light)
5. Gravity/Atmosphere
6. Seas (water for life[which predates our sun])
7. Land (planetesimals to form planets, water for life)
8. Genetics and plant life (inference for bacteria and simpler genetic structures)
9. The Sun, Moon, and all the stars (time).
10. Dinosaurs
11. Birds
12. Mammals (including both sexes of humans)
13. The three geological specification events

I can demonstrate each of these points, in order, in the book of Genesis, how is this possible? Aside from I am crazy jokes or that I am reading a 2-4k year old comic book implications! Does it seam plausible that this information should be described?

I know not the rules for posting a link and do not want violate any procedure out of respect, but I do have a blog on this topic. If you would like to read and critique my point of view you may go to thetruth.life and read the posts. We can then discuss the flaws here as you see them, aside from the information being present or represented from the Bible.

Regards, GBTG


Baruch

Quote from: GBTG on November 02, 2017, 01:46:49 PM
How reasonable are you? How factual? Absolute proof is not possible for scientists or Christians, but what about statistical probability? If you had a probability of one in a  billion would that be enough? One in a trillion? Before I begin this discussion I think it worth while to come to some agreement as to what one can accept as a reasonable statistical number that would make something factual or unrealistically possible? I will take the highest, well reasoned number presented... ie it has to be based on the current population or all the human population to this point in history. You don't get to state infinity as that is absolute.

Thx, GBTG         

All human thought is bullshit.  So you can have reasonable bullshit, or irrational bullshit.  But it smells the same.  Proof applies only to math, but per Goedel, not completely even in math.  Christianity is about a cultural milieu.  Has nothing to do with rationality or science.  Genesis is actually Jewish, borrowed from the Babylonians, borrowed in turn by them from the Sumerians.  A series of mutating folk tales.  What is the probability that a folk tale is science?  Zero.

Same as politics, what is the probability that George Washington as a boy, chopped down a cherry tree?  Zero.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Baruch

Quote from: GBTG on November 02, 2017, 06:14:35 PM
Well stated, I appreciate the thoughtfulness of the post, and the accompanying statistics! I believe that life is actually far more ubiquitous in the universe than that number. I fully expect that we should find copious amounts of life under the icy surface of Europa.

Question two does life elsewhere make Christianity, or more specifically the Bible inaccurate?

Warm regards, GBTG

We don't need to meet Vulcans or Klingons, to know that ape man folk tales are wrong.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Hakurei Reimu

Quote from: GBTG on November 02, 2017, 02:37:07 PM
My username is sufficient for my name, and I am a Christian that works in the academic science community. I understand that this puts me in the minority on a board such as this. I am curious though as to the factual reasoning or proven scientific (not theories) facts that have led you to the atheist conclusion?
You work in the academic science community, yet you use "theory" as if it's a mere guess instead of a well-confirmed explanatory framework in which to put all the data of a scientific field. I'm curious why you say that you are looking for "facts" and not "theories."

The theory of evolution makes sense of the Linean taxonomy, the universitality of the genetic code, the distribution of ancient forms in the fossil record, the large swaths of shared anatomy, biochemistry, and biology amongst life forms, etc. It's a pattern absolutely conformant to the explanation that all of life on earth is descendent from a common root, where populations branch off to form the heirarchical structure of taxonomy, genetic commonalities, and the fossil record, and adapt to suit their respective environments. Special creation has no explanation for this pattern, at all.

Quote
My intent here is purposeful as I am looking for insight as to the facts or statistical likelihood of your point of view being the most accurate?
The theistic hypothesis has no explanatory power. None. Any possible set of observations is "consistent" with that of an omnipotent god's existence (assuming that we're not adhering to the biblical account â€" which is wrong on every level). Ergo, no observation can confirm a god's existence. This is a basic principle of epistomology; in order for an explanation to be taken seriously, there must be some risk. This is the essence of what is called "falsifiability." In order for a theory to be proven right, there must be some possible set of observations that proves it wrong. Evolution predicts that you will not observe a large set of observations. Ergo, when you do find what evolution predicts, it is confirmation of it.

Quote
Presumably these facts can be proven, therefore it should stand to reason that there is some quantitative analysis or probability that makes them facts.
A theory is what you would call a scientific fact. While all theory is tentative, well established and founded theories such as that of evolution have such strong evidential support that they are all but incontrovertable. Evolution dovetails neatly into the observations of paleontology, genetics, and unites all of biology. "Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution," said Theodosius Dobzhansky.

Quote
Hence my original question. In other words what statistical probability makes an argument, point of view, or observation a fact? I would like to have some consensus as to what is an acceptable probability of being impossible or so unlikely as to not be possible?
You're approaching the matter wrong. While I'm a great advocate of Bayesian probability and reasoning, the thresholds for each individual deciding that some idea holds merit is completely up to the individual, though people can tell if you're being cagey or stubborn. There is no agreed upon number. There is just a grand duke-out in the scientific literature, where after a number of bouts and tests the worthy theories prove their worth and the eviscerated corpses of the unworthy are swept off the proverbial mat.

Special creation had its chance to prove its worth, and its mangled corpse was swept into the dustbin of scientific history. Same with the biblical account of the creation of the universe, biblical medicine, intercessory prayer, ritual sacrifice and other ideas connected with theism all reduced to metaphorical piles of battered flesh and raw bone to be mopped up and disposed of. It's like seeing the students of a particular boxing coach lose again and again, and badly; you begin to suspect that this particular coach has no value.
Warning: Don't Tease The Miko!
(she bites!)
Spinny Miko Avatar shamelessly ripped off from Iosys' Neko Miko Reimu

Baruch

Quote from: GBTG on November 02, 2017, 07:55:43 PM
I specifically came to the religious section of an atheist forum for two reasons, the first being that there is one... If you don't want to participate or entertain a believer like myself why does this exist? Second, I came to this forum because, as far as I can tell atheists in general are more open minded than many religious people whom attend church every Sunday. As this is a religious topic the Bible is obviously going to come up.

The Bible is only as accurate as the understanding of the person reading said Bible allows. If one reads with presumptions and bias, wrong conclusions may be inferred though the information is accurate. I was extremely guilty of this as both a non-believer and now Christian.

What if the first book in the Bible Genesis, was or has been read incorrectly for many years. The catholic church and many biblical scholars had egg on their face due to Copernicus for the very same reason. What if the first book of Genesis in the Bible literally described in order these events?

1. Space (the vacuum of the universe)
2. Pre-Atomic particles (strings)
3. Polarities (+/-)
4. Nuclear fusion (light)
5. Gravity/Atmosphere
6. Seas (water for life[which predates our sun])
7. Land (planetesimals to form planets, water for life)
8. Genetics and plant life (inference for bacteria and simpler genetic structures)
9. The Sun, Moon, and all the stars (time).
10. Dinosaurs
11. Birds
12. Mammals (including both sexes of humans)
13. The three geological specification events

I can demonstrate each of these points, in order, in the book of Genesis, how is this possible? Aside from I am crazy jokes or that I am reading a 2-4k year old comic book implications! Does it seam plausible that this information should be described?

I know not the rules for posting a link and do not want violate any procedure out of respect, but I do have a blog on this topic. If you would like to read and critique my point of view you may go to thetruth.life and read the posts. We can then discuss the flaws here as you see them, aside from the information being present or represented from the Bible.

Regards, GBTG

Yes, Genesis is read wrong by both laity and clergy ... by the pious and the impious.  You have to be a poet, not an accountant, to understand it.  It is a work of psychology and anthropology, not physics.  I happen to be a mystic, a Kabbalist ... scripture makes sense to me, because I have a basis, other than ignorance, for appreciating it.  Not all of it is equally good however.  The drunk Jews who wrote it, were not equal to the task, even when sober.  Study gnostics, mystics, sufis, kabbalists ... and poetry.  Or study something other than scripture, rather than waste your time.  Moby Dicky has many layers too ... and deals with Leviathan, an extra-Biblical character.  And the name "Ahab" for the captain, is no accident either.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

aitm

Quote from: GBTG on November 02, 2017, 07:55:43 PM


The Bible is only as accurate as the understanding of the person reading said Bible allows.

If one reads with presumptions and bias, wrong conclusions may be inferred though the information is accurate.


ah, the often, yet so misunderstood case of "I understand the babble and you don't, allow me to tell you the truth of it".  Damn man, we only get one of these types every 10 days......so, by my math.....# 367 and counting.
A humans desire to live is exceeded only by their willingness to die for another. Even god cannot equal this magnificent sacrifice. No god has the right to judge them.-first tenant of the Panotheust

Hakurei Reimu

Quote from: GBTG on November 02, 2017, 07:55:43 PM
What if the first book of Genesis in the Bible literally described in order these events?

1. Space (the vacuum of the universe)
2. Pre-Atomic particles (strings)
3. Polarities (+/-)
4. Nuclear fusion (light)
5. Gravity/Atmosphere
6. Seas (water for life[which predates our sun])
7. Land (planetesimals to form planets, water for life)
8. Genetics and plant life (inference for bacteria and simpler genetic structures)
9. The Sun, Moon, and all the stars (time).
10. Dinosaurs
11. Birds
12. Mammals (including both sexes of humans)
13. The three geological specification events
If it did, then it would be completely scientifically inaccurate. However, it doesn't, so it's irrelevant.

No, don't bother with the bullshit about how the meaning of Genesis depends on how it's read. That's just using the bible as a ventriloquist dummy. You can make the bible say anything you damn well please depending on your abuse of language, but given the era it was written in, Genesis was not meant to be any tricky match-the-day-with-the-cosmological-epoc puzzle game you're trying to play. The people who wrote the bible literally thought this is how the creation of everything played out. Trying to fit the biblical account to scientific determination of the origin of the universe, the earth, and life is a fool's errand.
Warning: Don't Tease The Miko!
(she bites!)
Spinny Miko Avatar shamelessly ripped off from Iosys' Neko Miko Reimu

GBTG

I appreciate the insights to this point and will trouble you no longer. I have the answer to my questions. This was not in vein and you all have been profoundly more helpful than I could have hoped.

Warm regards, GBTG

Baruch

Quote from: GBTG on November 02, 2017, 08:53:46 PM
I appreciate the insights to this point and will trouble you no longer. I have the answer to my questions. This was not in vein and you all have been profoundly more helpful than I could have hoped.

Warm regards, GBTG

Warm regards back at you.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

aitm

Later on dude...and "glory be to Gilgamesh" eh?
A humans desire to live is exceeded only by their willingness to die for another. Even god cannot equal this magnificent sacrifice. No god has the right to judge them.-first tenant of the Panotheust

Mike Cl

Quote from: GBTG on November 02, 2017, 07:55:43 PM

The Bible is only as accurate as the understanding of the person reading said Bible allows. If one reads with presumptions and bias, wrong conclusions may be inferred though the information is accurate. I was extremely guilty of this as both a non-believer and now Christian.
I would take some issue with this statement.  First, which bible are you referring to?  There are many, as I'm sure you are aware.  And the one common element they have is that they do not agree one with the other.  When was Genesis written?  And what was the cosmology of those doing the writing? 

I'd suggest the bible is only as accurate as what is written on the pages of said bible.  If this is supposed to be the work of god, then our 'understandings' should have nothing to do with what is contained in whatever bible you are reading.  I would think god could string together coherent sentences in all languages--not just Aramaic, Hebrew or Greek.  But apparently not since the source documents are in those three languages.

Anyway, I regard the bible as simply fiction.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?<br />Then he is not omnipotent,<br />Is he able but not willing?<br />Then whence cometh evil?<br />Is he neither able or willing?<br />Then why call him god?

trdsf

Quote from: GBTG on November 02, 2017, 06:14:35 PM
Well stated, I appreciate the thoughtfulness of the post, and the accompanying statistics! I believe that life is actually far more ubiquitous in the universe than that number. I fully expect that we should find copious amounts of life under the icy surface of Europa.
I agree, I think life is quite a bit more common than one in a billion, but I haven't settled my thinking on how common I think intelligent life is.  It's the problem of the single data point -- it may be that on a sufficiently clement world, intelligence always arises once life has gotten started, or it may be a rare development, and we have no data to suggest one way or the other.  It's why I think missions to Mars, Europa, Ganymede and Titan are so important.  If any sort of life is on any of those worlds -- or (cosmic jackpot) all of them -- that strongly suggests life arises easily.

Back to what happens when you have big numbers in play: even if there's on average only one sentient species per galaxy, that means there are about two trillion sentient species in our universe.

Anyway, the question of ETI is a favorite one of mine to play with.


Quote from: GBTG on November 02, 2017, 06:14:35 PM
Question two does life elsewhere make Christianity, or more specifically the Bible inaccurate?
Neither one needs extraterrestrial help in being demonstrated inaccurate.  The vast majority of Christians are followers of Paul's theology and interpretations rather than of Jeshua bar-Joseph's teachings directly, so they're really Paulists rather than Christians to begin with, and the bible itself is shot through with contradictions, historical inaccuracies and logical impossibilities.

I can't recall off the top of my head any Old or New Testament verses that explicitly refer to life off this planet (or its absence).  Probably the most relevant interpretationally, if other sentient life is found, is the whole idea of man being in god's image.  An interesting situation relative to that is if we found extraterrestrial life that is completely different internally but very closely resembles our species externally.

I should note that this would not prove a god exists, because it could equally well be explained by the existence of an older but still naturally occurring species that decided it wanted to populate the worlds with humanoids, and just took advantage of the biology already in place on those worlds.  I would argue better explained that way, since that doesn't require positing anything outside the natural world.

If we found many worlds with simple life, and few with sentient life, and none of those sentient species resembled us except the broadest terms, I think that argues against any of the anthropomorphic gods of most Terrestrial religions.  If a god is the creative force, why waste time creating worlds that have nothing capable of worship?  Further, ETIs that don't resemble us also don't resemble the biblical god (remember "created in god's image"), so why create them at all when that can only lead to a theological second-class status?

If belief in a creator god is important to that god, at a bare minimum what we should see if and when we start contacting ETIs is that their religious experience (if any) should be roughly the same as ours.  I strongly doubt that's what we'll find.

Let me turn the question around -- what if we start discovering other intelligences, and they are a) all different from each other structurally and biologically and b) have sufficiently similar religions that it is difficult to rule out a common source even though they developed in isolation from each other, and c) that religion does not resemble any Earth religion in any way, certainly none of the major ones, and none of the minor ones in any meaningful detail.

What would *that* mean for the human concept of god?  Is that sufficient evidence that they're right and humans (believers and non-believers both) are wrong?  That there's more than one god and they share the galaxy?  That everybody's wrong except the non-believers?

I'll tell you right now that my own answer to this is, "Um.  No clue."
"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." -- Barbara Jordan

trdsf

Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on November 02, 2017, 05:39:57 PM
And the fact that it probably happened more than once, after major disasters, is a strong indicator that life really is tenacious.
As near as we can tell, there was no second abiogenic event after any of the great extinction events -- life is sufficiently good at evolving its way into ecological niches that even after the Permian-Triassic event, where some 95% of marine and 70% of terrestrial species went extinct, that still left quite a bit of life, with a lot of abandoned ecological gaps just waiting to be filled.  A second abiogenesis would mean a form of life not based on DNA as we currently know it, and to date, no one has found any Terrestrial organism that exists outside the DNA tree of life.  Life as it arose on Earth is sufficiently resilient in and of itself that no re-start was needed.

Now, there were probably several abiogeneses in the earliest days of life, all competing with each other for ultimate dominance.  We're descended from the one that reproduced better than the others, and probably 'ingested' (by way of chemically disassembling) their competition for raw material to make copies with.
"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." -- Barbara Jordan

fencerider

#28
Quote from: GBTG on November 02, 2017, 06:14:35 PM
does life elsewhere make Christianity, or more specifically the Bible inaccurate?
Oh the irony!!! The Bible doesn’t say anything about life on other planets. Leave it to the theologists to create their own negation of the Bible out of whole cloth. If the universe was found to be full of life, there would still not be any contradiction with the Bible.

In the same vein. Neither a Christian can use the story of Jonah as a proof of god, nor can an atheist use it to prove the Bible is fiction. Getting swallowed by a fish and living to tell about it is not so rare that it can be called a miracle. Getting swallowed by a fish and living to tell about it is not so rare that an atheist can call it fiction. My guestimation is that it happens once every 20-30 years in places where people eat a lot of fish. There is a youtube video of a hairless Japanese man that survived.

Although finding life elsewhere would not negate the Bible, the errors and contradictions it contains on other subjects would.
"Do you believe in god?", is not a proper English sentence. Unless you believe that, "Do you believe in apple?", is a proper English sentence.

fencerider

Quote from: trdsf on November 03, 2017, 12:03:51 AM
As near as we can tell, there was no second abiogenic event after any of the great extinction events
Where do viruses fit in the picture?
"Do you believe in god?", is not a proper English sentence. Unless you believe that, "Do you believe in apple?", is a proper English sentence.