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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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I mean I suppose the simplest answer is that its a subjective decision. Do you accept string theory for instance? Or the multiverse theory from quantum mechanics? I read a paper a while back which suggests parenting is pretty much useless. A child will turn out the way it will turn out regardless what values you instill. Thus why two siblings can behave completely the opposite. Just on the surface, do you agree with that, and will you stop trying to raise your kids with certain values? I'm sure you have your own reasons for what scientific ideas you agree or disagree with.
Isn't it fundamental to science that we doubt ourselves, doubt what we know about the universe? At which point do owe ideas our allegiance of face ridicule? At which point must we nod to the popular opinion or be burned at the stake?
Its definitely an interesting question, its just very personal. Some say Kepler defended the heliocentric model because he was a sun-worshiper. So, I personally don't think science requires our belief or acceptance, it only requires our understanding. Plenty of times I've defended positions that I think are wrong, such as the flat earth, or the soul and mediums. I think a good scientist knows not to turn science political. They must be capable of working with ideas they disagree with.
What's important here is one's reasons for accepting or rejecting something. Are they rationally justified reasons or are they not rationally justified reasons? If taken out of context I agree with what you said in this post.
If we go with what sounds good to us that's a bad reason for believing something. What sounds good to one may not sound good to another. So we know that's not reliable if we want to believe true things.
The opposite is that if we reject what doesn't sound good to us that is also a bad reason for rejecting it.
If we can't think of another explanation for something and simply go with what we think at first that is a bad reason for accepting it. If later it turns out, through observation and experimentation that what you initially thought turns out to be likely to be true then you may have been right the whole time... The difference is that after its been more or less proven you are now rationally justified in accepting it and the evidence that supports it is a good reason. Of after that, something else comes along and proves that thing wrong then you have a choice. If you keep believing it despite the contrary evidence then you are no longer rationally justified... But if you then reject it... Then you're once again rationally justified.
And by the way, if you accept the multiverse theory you are not rationally justified. Calling it a possibility is okay. Just as many atheists might say, sure a god is possible... It doesn't mean they accept it. I think you might be conflating the two things. I personally, will not accept string theory or the multiverse idea until the evidence points in that direction. Until then they are simply entertaining ideas.
Evolution on the other hand has been demonstrated and observed and all the evidence points in that direction. So I accept it. If it was falsified tomorrow I would reject it in favor of whatever else all the evidence pointed towards. Don't, take this to mean that I'm not extremely confident about evolution and I somehow think it might be falsified. This is just an illustration of how I operate.
"And by the way..."
Well, but evidence is just observation in the light of theory. That's why I always shake my head when someone asks for evidence, because anything can be turned to evidence with the right interpretation. Evidence is theory-dependant, not data-dependant. So how do you decide what constitutes as exclusive evidence, and how much of it do you need before you feel like it points in the direction of string theory? You can't just wing it like the famous pornography comment, "I know it when I see it." That's a threshold you need to have decided before finding the evidence, otherwise you run into problem with falsifiability.
"perhaps the better question is how does anyone decide what to accept and reject? "
Properly scrutinised evidence, like the scientific method uses. Or you can use faith and believe whatever you like, lot's of luck with that.
"There are things which scientists disagree with one another on,"
Unlike religions you mean? What a truly asinine thing to say, though of course scientists will examine the evidence and when it shows something is true beyond any reasonable doubt arrive at a consensus, as they do with species evolution. No scientists dispute this on scientific grounds anymore, only because of their religious beliefs.
"Nobody can disagree with the data, but people can disagree with how it ought to be interpreted."
What data? What on earth are you talking about? Has this data been peer reviewed? What evidence is demonstrated to support it? You are making the moronic claim that science is no more than a subjective pick and mix. Firstly anyone anywhere can falsify the work of any scientist if they have the evidence, and science rewards those who disprove claims and ideas at least as much as those who verify them, as this also advances our knowledge. You donlt seem to understand this basic cornerstone of the scientific method.
"If six billion people can appear is just two hundred years. Surely one billion can appear in the previous 6,000. Not to mention this graph already takes plagues and wars into account. So to the contrary, if we remove those variable, it would explain why we didn't reach 7 billion earlier."
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/377-billion-year-old-fossils-stak...
"“The authors offer a convincing set of observations that could signify life,” says Kurt Konhauser, a geomicrobiologist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, who was not involved in the study. But “at present, I do not see a way in which we will definitively prove ancient life at 3.8 billion years ago.”
When life first emerged on Earth has been an enduring and frustrating mystery. ***The planet is 4.55 billion years old,*** but thanks to plate tectonics and the constant recycling of Earth’s crust, only a handful of rock outcrops remain that are older than 3 billion years, including 3.7-billion-year-old formations in Greenland’s Isua Greenstone Belt. And these rocks tend to be twisted up and chemically altered by heat and pressure, making it devilishly difficult to detect unequivocal signs of life."
Are you going to phone the Geology department of the university, and tell them they're out by 4,549,994,000 years?
--------------------------------------
Then you can inform the United States department of the interior that the geological survey the conducted is also wrong. by a staggering 4,549,994,000 years.
https://geomaps.wr.usgs.gov/parks/gtime/ageofearth.pdf
Geologists pffft, what do they know eh.
---------------------------------------------------
You better get on the phone to Australia as well...
https://blog.everythingdinosaur.co.uk/blog/_archives/2011/08/28/4888574....
So did your deity create the light from stars more than 6000 light years away en route then?
I'm not a young earth creationist in the strictest sense, as evidenced by the change in conversation from Algebe's population to your geological questions. As far as I can tell, scripture implies the earth was around before God created life upon it. The sense I get is that the universe was already created and around for a long time. The earth was a part of that universe. The second verse in Genesis implies a pause. "Now, (pause) the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."
God appears to have come to it in that state. It had the appearance of a nebula, maybe a cloud of gas or dust. Or maybe already clustered into a planet, since it has water the way Mars appears to have. Young's Literal Translation makes it easier to see: "The earth hath existed waste and void."
So if you ask me, the earth is as old as it can possibly be. The life upon it isn't.
"So if you ask me, the earth is as old as it can possibly be. The life upon it isn't"
I didn't ask, and since science has amassed evidence that refutes this beyond any reasonable doubt, I don't particularly care. The biblical creation myth can only be viewed as man's first crude attempt at explaining where life came from. It's demonstrably erroneous, and human knowledge fuelled by scientific rigour and integrity has moved our knowledge on long ago. How anyone "feels" about that is of no importance. Evidence is all that matters, and all the evidence shows life evolved, over billions of years.
Me - "If you ask me"
You - "I didn't ask"
Duh, the word 'if' describes a condition. Something that isn't currently the case, but might be.
Looking at the Hebrew text — http://biblehub.com/interlinear/genesis/1.htm — that "now" (which is not used in other translations) is just a letter waw, which is found in other parts of the same text meaning a simple "and", as in "and void", "and said God", "and saw God"...
No pause implied here, it's just the progression of the tale: Yahweh took a first action and created the (formless and empty) earth under the primeval ocean, then he noted that he should deal with those details. Then he proceeded to create the vault of the firmament to contain an atmosphere and separated the earth from the lower waters, creating coastlines, mountains, valleys, etc., thus giving it form. And then created the living beings, filling the empty place.
It's the contrary. The "waters" (the primeval ocean that filled the Universe) had the earth within itself.
"Yahweh took a first action and created the (formless and empty) earth under the primeval ocean, then he noted that he should deal with those details."
That "then" which you emphasized is the pause I'm referring to. Verse one happens, then, at some point, perhaps immediately, perhaps years later, verse two happens. I lean more towards years later, because verse two sounds like God found the earth that way. Its as if He were to now decide on going to Saturn, and molding it for life.
That primeval ocean sounds like something you find in early Sumerian writings. I don't really see that reflected in these verses. The water is clearly on the earth, not the earth in an ocean universe.
"As far as I can tell, scripture implies"
Who cares what bronze age superstitions imply?
Science collects evidence, and rigorously tests it. Religion doesn't cure or eradicate disease, or put men on the moon, science did.
"If six billion people can appear is just two hundred years. Surely one billion can appear in the previous 6,000. "
Without mechanised farming, and modern medicine? You are funny, you YEC's make me laugh, you really do.
No, why without farming and modern medicine? They clearly played a role.
@John 6IX Breezy: so let me ask you, do you believe in evolution?
Here's a crazy metaphor to explain my position. Though, as I've said around here. I'm not one to believe or disbelieve theories, I treat them as tools to be used. Not dogmas to be obeyed:
I think a normal person can throw a rock high in the air. I don't think they can reach the moon with it.
@John, just want a simple answer. Either you believe, or you do not
If you want a simple answer, then no. But don't expect to understand much with that answer.
@John, why don't you believe? What do you think is the answer?
Breezy "If six billion people can appear is just two hundred years. Surely one billion can appear in the previous 6,000. "
Without mechanised farming, and modern medicine? You are funny, you YEC's make me laugh, you really do.
"No, why without farming and modern medicine? They clearly played a role."
Obviously because *modern* medicine, AS THE NAME IMPLIES, hasn't been around for most of the last 6000 years, likewise mechanised farming. Two important factors causing an exponential increase in the human population that is a very recent phenomena.
A model that pairs up humans and has them produce 4 children in 30 years requires about 900 years to produce 7*10^9 people from a starting pair.
"Today at school there was a table set up with a religious group." And therein lies the problem. School and religious groups should never be together. They shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence except for "All religious groups are prohibited to be within 1 mile of a school under penalty of law."
""who told you that? There is absolutely no proof of it, and science is lying. It has an agenda to deceive people"."
How many scientific facts do they deny that don't refute any part of their superstitious religious beliefs?
"I am absolutely fed up with this ignorance and stupidity. People could argue that ignorance does not equal stupidity. In many cases, they are spot on. However, there exists a wealth of information which demonstrates the earth is nowhere near 4000-6000 years old, and that evolution is true. "
Indeed there is, you won't want to read this though...
https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/starlight/are-all-stars-within-6%...
Barking mad, I'm talking madder than a box of frogs.
If people insist absolute knowledge was presented to humans in the bronze age, and written into a single book, and that nothing science has helped us learn since can contradict any of it, then stupidity is the only word, wilful ignorant stupidity. Of course they can choke on it for all I care, but it's a cruel and immoral act to blight children's education by trying to claim their denial of science is in fact scientific.
Luckily there are people who have taken it upon themselves to fight ignorant closed minded superstitious dogma, and defend the scientific process and it's ideals from creationist lies and propaganda. This should cheer you up...
https://youtu.be/VNIRUigPxA8
Creationists are either ignorant or liars.
I wonder why these scientists with an agenda aren't at the school preaching their beliefs. Oh, that's right, because the evidence speaks for itself, unlike the religious who need to preach.
Returning to the topic that was hijacked by the one who molds reality to fit his beliefs, my mother-in-law was from Latvia, bordering Lithuania. And she believed in just about every form of superstition. You name it, she truly believed it.
The thing is, when so many people hold such beliefs, it takes a long time to break down these barriers to advancement.
@ David Killens
Latvia is less religious than we are. There is also a bigger religious divide. We are a heavily Roman Catholic nation, and I would compare us more to a country like Poland. Poland is also heavily Roman Catholic, (even more so than us). Most other nations around us are not primarily of that faith. However, I agree with your point, it does take long to break down these barriers. I have friends who truly believe that they have talked to spirits, met Jesus, etc. While not everyone is like that here, I know some. I myself used to believe that I saw a ghost as a child, until I found out that what I experienced was called Hypnagogia, causing me to hallucinate. It just seems that with all the books/resources, people do have the ability to learn these concepts. Sadly, there seems to be an unwillingness to do this.
WOW! What great English for someone from Lithuania. 70 percent of the world shares your problem. Keep posting. The Internet is changing things rapidly.
"If it is a Miracle, any sort of evidence will answer, but if it is a Fact, proof is necessary." - Mark Twain
chimp3 "Creationists are either ignorant or liars."
Or both of course, as they're not mutually exclusive.
Religion: Designed to keep people at a mentally average age of around... 5 Years Old.
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