Re: slightly OT, but still connected

>>>>> "Clayton" == Clayton Doyles <cd@xxxxxx> writes:

Clayton> "Cousin Ricky" <rickyusvi@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
Clayton> news:1114737704.465008.249760@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Clayton Doyles wrote:
>> > On the other side of the coin, I don't see any evidence that the
>> > universe is
>> > really billions of years old.
>>
>> Well, just because you don't see it doesn't mean that generations of
>> scientific effort haven't seen it either.

Clayton> Have they? Are you 100% sure? How are we so sure that
Clayton> these generations are correct? In 10 years, they may be
Clayton> totally disproven despite the fact that their current
Clayton> experiments produce perfect results each time.

>> > We have two schools of thought here that are similar in one
>> > way: both ages come from man. Man, through the disciples,
>> > wrote The Bible with Divine guidance;
>>
>> For which we have only the say-so of the theologians who read the
>> documents centuries after they were written, compiled, or spliced
>> together.

Clayton> Isn't it the same situation for a person who takes over
Clayton> doing the same research as one before him who has now
Clayton> passed on? Surely, some of the previous researcher's
Clayton> material will be in error and will have to be accepted on
Clayton> "faith".

I don't follow you at all here. Yes, some of the previous researcher's
material will be in error. No, it will not have to be accepted on
faith. Good science involves publishing sufficient information that
others are able to reproduce your results.

I don't think your argument has anything to do with the reliability of
biblical manuscripts, which is what you seem to be wanting to coment on.

To the previous post (Cousin Ricky?), the reliability of biblical
manuscripts, in the sense that the documents are faithful copies of the
originals, is well established and acknowledged even by those who do not
believe their "message." While you may not agree with the views of
modern theologians, with some notable exceptions, most of their views
are modern repeats of materials which can be heard in second and third
century theologians (in the case of the Christian New Testament
documents).

One notable exception is the age of the earth. There does not seem to
be any interest in the question prior to Bishop Usher's adding up the
dates (early 17th century) he could find to arrive at a "date of
creation." This general lack of interest in the question is, for me,
rather telling of its theological importance.

In any event, I have no problems with following the "dating game" of
modern physics and archeology. It's best practice, with honestly stated
uncertainties (well, the popular press manages to forget those a lot)
and many modern Christian thinkers, e.g., the late Francis Schaeffer,
had no problems with the idea of pushing back the date of creation as
far as need be to fit with modern science.

>> > and it has also been man who has
>> > determined the age of the universe in the billions of years.
>>
>> After looking at countless evidence.

Clayton> Perhaps in some peoples' minds, yes, but I'm not convinced.

You're entitled to be skeptical, and there are weaknesses in the
process. But they are not of such magnitude as to throw out the results
or even conclude they are meaningless.

>> > Are we so
>> > sure that radiocarbon and other methods of dating aren't invalid?
>>
>> The weaknesses of radiocarbon dating were exposed a long time ago, and
>> the method has since been recalibrated against samples of *known* age.
>> Today, the method is *known* to be acurate for its domain.

Clayton> Take a "known" weight from the NIST and calibrate a scale.
Clayton> Now, weigh your item. Now, reweigh after doing the same
Clayton> calibration the next day. Continue to do this process for
Clayton> a period of time. No matter what you do, small amounts of
Clayton> error will occur whether or not your equipment is sensitive
Clayton> enough to notice them or not. Also, are you certain you're
Clayton> NIST certified weight is really the weight it's supposed to
Clayton> be? What if their master scale was off by 0.000001 g that
Clayton> day?

It's a silly example again because it misses the point. No measurement
in science ever comes without error estimates. Ditto for the NIST
reference mass (which is, I believe, the last unit based on a physical
artifact just because no one has come up with a non-ambiguous way to
provide a reference mass).

>> Trouble is that its domain is only a few thousand years back, and
>> only over articles that were once alive. When you use "age of
>> the universe" and "radiocarbon" in the same argument, you only
>> confirm what any scientist can deduce just by hearing your
>> thesis: that you haven't done enough research to form a credible
>> argument. Here's a start:
>>
>> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/methuselah/
>> http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html
>>
>> > Are we so sure that The Bible is correct?
>>
>> Those who are so sure that the Bible is correct cannot be
>> convinced otherwise. I strongly recommend you stop courting them
>> *now*, and move onto far easier pursuits--such as observing QSO
>> 3C-273 in a 50mm refractor at high noon.

Clayton> Observing this quasar- in radio or optically? "High noon"
Clayton> as you suggest sounds more like a radio observation
Clayton> request. In any case, I'm not so sure this object lies at
Clayton> the distance they currently say it does. And, a 6"
Clayton> aperture is the least required to see it visually, so 50mm
Clayton> isn't going to cut it.

Uhm, I think you missed the unwritten <sarcasm> in that paragraph.

>>
>> > The point is... no matter how you look at it, you must pick
>> > what you believe is the most correct and depend on man's
>> > correctness (or lack thereof).
>>
>> Believing in the literal inerrancy of a document penned by man is
>> to depend on man's correctness.
>>
>> Believing in the concrete evidence standing in the world in front
>> of you, or passing through a spectroscope from the sky above you
>> is to depend not on man's correctness, but upon God's very
>> universe.
>>
>> Think about it.

Clayton> Depends on how you look at it. Should I believe a
Clayton> researcher's son's son, who is now carrying on the work of
Clayton> three generations of science? Oh, they have all recorded
Clayton> the data precisely over the last 75 years or so. I do see
Clayton> little marks here and there with crossed out and initialled
Clayton> data. Guess I should just ignore that. On the other hand,
Clayton> a whole group of experiments were performed that produced
Clayton> data quite outside the 'norm' that would normally be
Clayton> obtained. No note was made as to why. Guess I should just
Clayton> ignore that too. After all, it's only a couple of weeks
Clayton> out of nearly 75 years. The evidence here is "concrete"
Clayton> alright and I have to have the "faith" that it was gathered
Clayton> correctly.

It really sounds to me like you've never done any of this, i.e.,
research, or else you would know that, like all human endeavors, this
one is frought with opportunity for error ranging from "oops, I forgot
to turn on the equipment" to "the whole design was wrong." I've gone
through an entire calibration sequence on some equipment and been
scratching my head over it when I realized that some circuit was
miswired or something was not turned on.

Again to the previous poster (Cousin Ricky again?), that particular
issue of the reliability of the biblical documents can be largely (but
not completely from a Christian theological viewpoint) answered by
literary analysis of textual fragments some of which date into the late
first century, and of secondary quotes from the primary sources which
allow one to trace the ancestry of the surviving documents and arrive at
a *very* good idea of what the original text was. Plus, the issues of
"inerrancy" is a theologically technical term with very tight
constraints that are really off-topic in s.a.a....

>> > To me, there's just as much "evidence", if you will, that the
>> > universe is 6,000 years old that there is 20 billion and I
>> > remain unconvinced by the so-called evidence that it is
>> > anything but.
>>
>> Oh. In other words, you in fact are one of the people that i
>> warned you not to debate. Sorry. My mistake.

Clayton> Like I said and hopefully made clear above, no matter whose
Clayton> book you look at, man or God's, there will always be things
Clayton> you have to accept on "faith". I choose the latter.

I'll agree with that for a reasonable defition of "faith" that does not
involved outright credulity.

regards,

roland
--
PGP Key ID: 66 BC 3B CD
Roland B. Roberts, PhD RL Enterprises
roland@xxxxxxxxxxx 6818 Madeline Court
roland@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Brooklyn, NY 11220
.

Relevant Pages
Quantcast