Religion and scuba

[NAM001]

Here is an article about the earths rotation speed changing. Talking about genesis..... on the first day there was no light so measurement of time was not the same as we do it now. when the sun did appear and the day was form rising to rising and if the earth rotated say once every million years and has gradually sped up from cosmic forces to what it is today then we are foolish to think that their day was 24 hours like ours is to day. if measurement of day is sun rise to sun rise then our artic region day length is really screwed up.



https://www.sciencenews.org/article/every-six-years-earth-spins-slightly-faster-and-then-slower

 

[Freewillow]

Dear KWS, I am open minded, so let's accept your bright hypothesis.

But now, read the bible again:

1:1] In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,
[
[1:3] Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

[1:5] God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
[1:6]



[1:14] And God said, "Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years,
[1:15] and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth." And it was so.
[1:16] God made the two great lights - the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night - and the stars.

earth was created before the sun was created . So to talk about days when the sun is not there is a bit of a strech. I agree, not a bigger one than to believe that earth existed before the sud did, or that plants were able to grow and bear fruits without sunlight and polinating insexts ( cretated by "God" a few days later..

 

[NAM001]

Ill bite..... how long was the heavens and the earth there before light appeared in time as measured then. You quote references nothing about ... and let the sun rise every 24 hours 2015 time. If that was a bit of a stretch then the earth could have been there for millions of years our time before the light apeared. By your own quote you said the earth and hevens were there and then the light came. Now i know the sience people will say that there is not 2 lights cause science says dark is the absence of light. Its just a pettyness for some to cling to. You picked all the right passages thanks for proving my point better than i did. I personally do not think there is that much difference in science and religion except the meat of religion is not physical and is what no science can measure. It can not be measured it can only be accepted or denied. That is where faith comes in. Faith is belief with out science's proofs. Is not it odd that when it comes to points of science and religion. science cant continue with out religion. and that on the faith side of the court.... faith can exist alone, it does not need science to go on. Very much like the denyers, they need the believers or they would be with out purpose.

Dear KWS, I am open minded, so let's accept your bright hypothesis.

But now, read the bible again:

1:1] In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,
[
[1:3] Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

[1:5] God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
[1:6]



[1:14] And God said, "Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years,
[1:15] and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth." And it was so.
[1:16] God made the two great lights - the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night - and the stars.

earth was created before the sun was created . So to talk about days when the sun is not there is a bit of a strech. I agree, not a bigger one than to believe that earth existed before the sud did, or that plants were able to grow and bear fruits without sunlight and polinating insexts ( cretated by "God" a few days later..

 

[Freewillow]

@KWS. SAdly enough, my mother tongue is french and not english. I do not understand what you are saying there. Sorry

 

[dfx]

Here is an article about the earths rotation speed changing. Talking about genesis..... on the first day there was no light so measurement of time was not the same as we do it now. when the sun did appear and the day was form rising to rising and if the earth rotated say once every million years and has gradually sped up from cosmic forces to what it is today then we are foolish to think that their day was 24 hours like ours is to day. if measurement of day is sun rise to sun rise then our artic region day length is really screwed up.



https://www.sciencenews.org/article/every-six-years-earth-spins-slightly-faster-and-then-slower

Sweet! A prime example of cherry-picking data. Here we have scientific evidence that the earth's rotation changes over time. We can use this to vindicate our otherwise completely implausible creation myth, while at the same time ignoring those other parts of the same evidence that say that this has been going for billions of years and that, since we now know how this works, we can approximate the rate of rotation in the future and in the past and that this bears no resemblance to our creation myth. Not even close.

Young earth creationists are usually masters of this technique, but obviously it's not exclusive to them.

 

[Diver0001]

Ill bite..... how long was the heavens and the earth there before light appeared in time as measured then. You quote references nothing about ... and let the sun rise every 24 hours 2015 time. If that was a bit of a stretch then the earth could have been there for millions of years our time before the light apeared.

Well.... we know that our solar system is about 4.6 billion years old. This has been established scientifically by analyzing the nuclear decay of certain isotopes that decay at a very predictable rate. We also know that the universe has existed for about 13.8 billion years. This has been measured by observing the temperature of the oldest detectable white dwarf stars. These stars undergo a very predictable life span and cool at a predictable rate. By extrapolation you can "roll back" this process mathematically and determine that the oldest things we can detect in the universe are about 13.8 billion years old and therefore the universe itself must be at least that old.

Now to the issues of how old the earth is and the 'creation' of day and night. It's clear that the universe had been pumping out light for many billions of years before the earth was even formed. The first stars "turned on" about 200 million years after the big bang and in this sense "let there be light" where earth is concerned didn't happen in a day or a week, it happened over a course of round about 9 billion years.

The process that "switched on" our own sun took place about 4.6 billion years ago. The earth could have existed as a cloud of dust and coagulating rock at about the same time but no life as we know it was possible due to the extreme heat. The early earth was almost certainly a big ball of molten rock at the time. In fact, even today, you don't have to really dig far below the surface to find that most of it still is.

While one may think that the "switching on" of a star can't be explained scientifically, there you would be wrong. It is not a result of divine magic or an act of God or whatever you may want to call it. The process by which a star switches on is now well understood. It happens very predictably and without any external influence whatsoever. If there is a God that "switched on" stars, then it can only be explained by God designing the law of gravity, which is the main force of nature that allows this to happen.

In this sense, if you are religious you would find your in less of an argument with science to suggest that God created gravity (and therefore indirectly He created light) than to say that He directly switches on individual stars. As far as I know, we can detect gravity and describe it but I'm not aware of any good explanation as to how gravity or the other main forces of the physical universe (strong and weak nuclear forces) emerged spontaneously out of the big bang. Good thing for us, however, that it did because if you change any of these primary parameters even a tiny bit, the universe and everything in it as we know it, would not exist. Was this an act of God or a REALLY lucky roll of the dice.....? Einstein, who was the father of quantum physics, said that he thought it must have been God.

So again, if you follow my logic, I think if there is a God, it was responsible for setting the laws of physics. Setting the ball rolling as it were. Everything after that appears, from everything we know, to unfold according to the laws of physics.

Of course, we didn't know any of this stuff 1700 years ago so people wrote it down in the best terms they could find to explain it. Actually this is what we're still doing except now we have scientific method and we can actually prove it. Maybe to a Roman ages monk, the moon did seem like a sign from God. I don't doubt that. I mean... it had to be there for a reason, right? How would an ancient monk explain night and day if he wasn't even aware that the earth was a planet, let along a spherical one.... and that it was spinning around at high speed like a top and twirling around the sun at even higher speed...... ?

To be honest, I think a Roman ages monk might have thought you were certifiably insane if you had told him that. These things were being observed but none of it could be explained by the body of knowledge we had at the time..... Best guess at the time was clearly that some higher power (since we knew that humans were not causing it) must have had a hand it in. It was a bloody good guess if you ask me. God created the heavens and the earth, day and night, the sun and moon and *presto* it all fits its own internal logic and the questions are neatly answered. A hell of a good theory. it was later proven wrong but as a starting point it gave people a way to understand the universe and it worked.

These are points were I believe religion should embrace science. We have facts that that are highly inconvenient if you want people to believe that the bible is literally the word of God. On other subjects, I believe we still need religion. As I said before, science can explain HOW things work (to an extent) but people still long for direction in giving meaning to the life they have. I think most Christians could eventually get used to the idea that the earth is really a LOT older that would seem from reading the bible. Frankly if it's 6000 or 4.6 billion years old... that can be explained by the accuracy of Roman era slide-rules. But the important parts of the bible are the parts that people take moral guidance from. The parts that tell us -- or can allow us to interpret -- what the heck we are supposed to make of our lives. That's something that I don't even think is the realm of science. Science is about the mechanics of the universe, religion is about what part an individual human being plays in the machine. All this bickering about differences makes me think that most of us has missed the obvious dove-tail in that.

R..

 

[JohnN]

Well.... we know that our solar system is about 4.6 billion years old. This has been established scientifically by analyzing the nuclear decay of certain isotopes that decay at a very predictable rate. We also know that the universe has existed for about 13.8 billion years. This has been measured by observing the temperature of the oldest detectable white dwarf stars. These stars undergo a very predictable life span and cool at a predictable rate. By extrapolation you can "roll back" this process mathematically and determine that the oldest things we can detect in the universe are about 13.8 billion years old and therefore the universe itself must be at least that old.

Now to the issues of how old the earth is and the 'creation' of day and night. It's clear that the universe had been pumping out light for many billions of years before the earth was even formed. The first stars "turned on" about 200 million years after the big bang and in this sense "let there be light" where earth is concerned didn't happen in a day or a week, it happened over a course of round about 9 billion years.

The process that "switched on" our own sun took place about 4.6 billion years ago. The earth could have existed as a cloud of dust and coagulating rock at about the same time but no life as we know it was possible due to the extreme heat. The early earth was almost certainly a big ball of molten rock at the time. In fact, even today, you don't have to really dig far below the surface to find that most of it still is.

While one may think that the "switching on" of a star can't be explained scientifically, there you would be wrong. It is not a result of divine magic or an act of God or whatever you may want to call it. The process by which a star switches on is now well understood. It happens very predictably and without any external influence whatsoever. If there is a God that "switched on" stars, then it can only be explained by God designing the law of gravity, which is the main force of nature that allows this to happen.

In this sense, if you are religious you would find your in less of an argument with science to suggest that God created gravity (and therefore indirectly He created light) than to say that He directly switches on individual stars. As far as I know, we can detect gravity and describe it but I'm not aware of any good explanation as to how gravity or the other main forces of the physical universe (strong and weak nuclear forces) emerged spontaneously out of the big bang. Good thing for us, however, that it did because if you change any of these primary parameters even a tiny bit, the universe and everything in it as we know it, would not exist. Was this an act of God or a REALLY lucky roll of the dice.....? Einstein, who was the father of quantum physics, said that he thought it must have been God.

So again, if you follow my logic, I think if there is a God, it was responsible for setting the laws of physics. Setting the ball rolling as it were. Everything after that appears, from everything we know, to unfold according to the laws of physics.

Of course, we didn't know any of this stuff 1700 years ago so people wrote it down in the best terms they could find to explain it. Actually this is what we're still doing except now we have scientific method and we can actually prove it. Maybe to a Roman ages monk, the moon did seem like a sign from God. I don't doubt that. I mean... it had to be there for a reason, right? How would an ancient monk explain night and day if he wasn't even aware that the earth was a planet, let along a spherical one.... and that it was spinning around at high speed like a top and twirling around the sun at even higher speed...... ?

To be honest, I think a Roman ages monk might have thought you were certifiably insane if you had told him that. These things were being observed but none of it could be explained by the body of knowledge we had at the time..... Best guess at the time was clearly that some higher power (since we knew that humans were not causing it) must have had a hand it in. It was a bloody good guess if you ask me. God created the heavens and the earth, day and night, the sun and moon and *presto* it all fits its own internal logic and the questions are neatly answered. A hell of a good theory. it was later proven wrong but as a starting point it gave people a way to understand the universe and it worked.

These are points were I believe religion should embrace science. We have facts that that are highly inconvenient if you want people to believe that the bible is literally the word of God. On other subjects, I believe we still need religion. As I said before, science can explain HOW things work (to an extent) but people still long for direction in giving meaning to the life they have. I think most Christians could eventually get used to the idea that the earth is really a LOT older that would seem from reading the bible. Frankly if it's 6000 or 4.6 billion years old... that can be explained by the accuracy of Roman era slide-rules. But the important parts of the bible are the parts that people take moral guidance from. The parts that tell us -- or can allow us to interpret -- what the heck we are supposed to make of our lives. That's something that I don't even think is the realm of science. Science is about the mechanics of the universe, religion is about what part an individual human being plays in the machine. All this bickering about differences makes me think that most of us has missed the obvious dove-tail in that.

R..

Nicely said. One item that has flown under the radar in these discussion is the equation God = Christianity. What if Buddha (or Mohamed) was right? Or better yet, what if the Deists have it right (we don't need no stinking organized religion)?

 

[dfx]

Well.... we know that our solar system is about 4.6 billion years old. This has been established scientifically by analyzing the nuclear decay of certain isotopes that decay at a very predictable rate. We also know that the universe has existed for about 13.8 billion years. This has been measured by observing the temperature of the oldest detectable white dwarf stars. These stars undergo a very predictable life span and cool at a predictable rate. By extrapolation you can "roll back" this process mathematically and determine that the oldest things we can detect in the universe are about 13.8 billion years old and therefore the universe itself must be at least that old.

But you weren't there! This invalidates everything you just explained, therefore the explanation that the FSM has created everything becomes the only true explanation by default.

Or something.

Good thing for us, however, that it did because if you change any of these primary parameters even a tiny bit, the universe and everything in it as we know it, would not exist. Was this an act of God or a REALLY lucky roll of the dice.....? Einstein, who was the father of quantum physics, said that he thought it must have been God.

Two things here. Einstein did talk about god quite a bit, but he wasn't actually a theist. He was a deist or perhaps a pantheist at best. He definitely did not believe in a personal god, like the Christian or the Jewish god. He said so himself.

Secondly, the argument about the laws and constants of nature being "fine tuned" can often be heard, but it's a bit of a red herring. For once, there's no consensus about this. Depending on who you ask, the laws and constants of nature can be changed quite a lot before it making any significant difference. The other thing is that even if we were to assume that the slightest change would make the biggest difference, we still couldn't tell what kind of difference it would make. All we could say is that things would be different, but we can't say how. We can say that life as we know it couldn't exist, but that doesn't mean that no life at all could exist. The fact is that we don't have another universe with different laws and constants of nature to look at. We have to plead ignorance and maybe we will never know.

Maybe to a Roman ages monk, the moon did seem like a sign from God. I don't doubt that. I mean... it had to be there for a reason, right? How would an ancient monk explain night and day if he wasn't even aware that the earth was a planet, let along a spherical one.... and that it was spinning around at high speed like a top and twirling around the sun at even higher speed...... ?

To be honest, I think a Roman ages monk might have thought you were certifiably insane if you had told him that. These things were being observed but none of it could be explained by the body of knowledge we had at the time..... Best guess at the time was clearly that some higher power (since we knew that humans were not causing it) must have had a hand it in. It was a bloody good guess if you ask me. God created the heavens and the earth, day and night, the sun and moon and *presto* it all fits its own internal logic and the questions are neatly answered. A hell of a good theory. it was later proven wrong but as a starting point it gave people a way to understand the universe and it worked.

This is known as the "god of the gaps," an argument from ignorance. And yes, people still do this today. Primarily religious ones, especially creationists, but it's a tempting pitfall for everybody.

Abiogenesis? Science doesn't have a sufficiently proven answer, therefore god must have done it.

The big bang is another commonly encountered one, but from those who aren't young earth creationists. (Another instance of how Christians can't even agree among themselves about their supposedly divinely revealed truth.) What happened before the big bang? What caused it? We don't know, therefore god did it.

The problem with this type of reasoning is (other than that it's logically incorrect) that its track record is exceptionally bad. Throughout history, people have encountered mysteries, things they couldn't explain. And invariably there were people resorting to supernatural explanations. And invariably, they turned out to be wrong. The actual answer turned out to be not magic. Every single time.

Thunder and lightning? Nope, not Zeus throwing down lightning bolts, but electricity. Tide goes in, tide goes out, you can't explain that. Nope, not Neptune doing it, but gravity. Rainbows? Nope, not a sign from god, but light and raindrops. People falling over and shaking violently? Nope, not demons, but epilepsy. Lights moving in the sky in weird patterns? Nope, not gods moving stars around, but heliocentricity and planets. The list goes on.

Not once has the answer turned out to be anything supernatural.

And even under the assumption that the explanation of these two cited cases (abiogenesis and the big bag) is indeed something supernatural, it still wouldn't mean that any particular god did it. It could have been Odin, Zeus, Superman, the FSM, or the pile of magic rocks I have in my backyard.

On other subjects, I believe we still need religion. As I said before, science can explain HOW things work (to an extent) but people still long for direction in giving meaning to the life they have.

I'm gonna have to disagree with you there. Religion and its adherents or proponents are not in any way in a better position to talk about the meaning or purpose of life than scientists are, or your grandmother is for that matter. What do they know that the rest of us doesn't know? Nothing, other than religious doctrines and ancient myths that have no basis in reality at all.

Now I'm well aware that many people find comfort in religion, find comfort in the belief that somebody's looking out for them, that they'll see the deceased members of their family again in the future, that there's some higher purpose to life. But that doesn't say anything about the truth of that belief.

Is it beneficial to believe in a lie? Or is it better to try to find truth? Me personally, I want to believe as many true things and as few false things as possible. Personally I think that's a good way to go through life. But I understand that for some people, this might not be enough, and that they need some, uhm, superior guidance or whatever you want to call it. Religion seems to be an obvious solution in these cases (even though I would argue that it's still not beneficial to believe in a lie and that there's better options), but there's a problem.

Religion comes with a huge amount of baggage. It's comforting to believe that when you die, you'll see your family again. But what if they didn't go to heaven, but went to hell instead? How can you find comfort in that possibility? What if you go to hell after you die? All it does is to perpetuate fear, and surely there can't be any comfort in fear. And this is just one example of the many problems that religion brings along.

 

[Diver0001]

Secondly, the argument about the laws and constants of nature being "fine tuned" can often be heard, but it's a bit of a red herring. For once, there's no consensus about this. Depending on who you ask, the laws and constants of nature can be changed quite a lot before it making any significant difference. The other thing is that even if we were to assume that the slightest change would make the biggest difference, we still couldn't tell what kind of difference it would make. All we could say is that things would be different, but we can't say how. We can say that life as we know it couldn't exist, but that doesn't mean that no life at all could exist. The fact is that we don't have another universe with different laws and constants of nature to look at. We have to plead ignorance and maybe we will never know.

It would take a lot longer to explain this than I feel this thread deserves. Suffice it to say that if the law of physics that describes how fast my cup of coffee gets cold were to change by an iota then we may still be here. Other forces of nature have a lot bigger impact.

The problem with this type of reasoning is (other than that it's logically incorrect) that its track record is exceptionally bad.

I wouldn't say that at all. It's track record in dreaming up plausible sounding theories for mass consumption is actually very good. I think if you lived 1700 years ago that God creating night and day would sound equally plausible -- perhaps even more so -- to the idea that we're all stuck to a spinning stone that is just floating around in a vast empty vacuum in space.... Science does essentially the same thing all the time. Theory spinning is nothing new. However, in science if a theory is disproved then it is abandoned. That's what we're missing in the religious arguments.

"Faith", is an often used word in religious context but it actually requires "suspension of rational thought". Personally speaking I think the a Roman monk was showing outstanding rationality when he thought of the idea that the sun, the moon, the movements of the stars etc etc. could all result from some sort of orchestration that we couldn't understand as being natural. In fact, he was even right, if you think about it. The only difference being that the orchestration had a natural cause. If we took that very same monk, transported him to our time and educated him in what we know that he would have suggested other theories. In other words, in antiquity, philosophers and "thinkers", educated men were the closest thing there was to a scientist and I believe it essentially attracted the same type of personality.

Throughout history, people have encountered mysteries, things they couldn't explain. And invariably there were people resorting to supernatural explanations. And invariably, they turned out to be wrong. The actual answer turned out to be not magic. Every single time.

We know now what we did not know then. Our understanding of the physical universe was very limited until well into the Renaissance. For the rest of human history, other theories were the best they had. My feeling about it is "who cares". Who cares if someone thought God made the sun come up. It didn't hurt anyone to believe that... to have "faith" in the fact that it was going to happen again tomorrow because God wanted it to.... If it helped people lead happy lives, there really is no issue.

The issue becomes that once we discovered that the sun doesn't "come up" at all, and contrary to all prior wisdom we really all all stuck to a spinning rock in space -- and we can prove it -- that the belief continues. The downside of the development of religion is that its belief in truth being absolute has made keeping abreast of scientific development very controversial.

Thunder and lightning? Nope, not Zeus throwing down lightning bolts, but electricity. Tide goes in, tide goes out, you can't explain that. Nope, not Neptune doing it, but gravity. Rainbows? Nope, not a sign from god, but light and raindrops. People falling over and shaking violently? Nope, not demons, but epilepsy. Lights moving in the sky in weird patterns? Nope, not gods moving stars around, but heliocentricity and planets. The list goes on.

Again, who cares. So what if it was wrong. It helped people get through their day.

I'm gonna have to disagree with you there. Religion and its adherents or proponents are not in any way in a better position to talk about the meaning or purpose of life than scientists are, or your grandmother is for that matter. What do they know that the rest of us doesn't know? Nothing, other than religious doctrines and ancient myths that have no basis in reality at all.

I'm not so sure about that. Science really doesn't get into WHY we are here, although I don't doubt that we will someday understand that there is no WHY... in a scientific sense. That doesn't change the fact that people need a way to give meaning to their lives. There may be exceptions, but most people need this. If they band together and decide to believe the same things because someone offers up a good story..... then why the hell not? Buddhism doesn't believe in a "God" at all and yet it is a religion nonetheless and a great many people find it easier to get from one day to the other by seeing their lives in this context.

Again... who cares? Meditation never killed anyone and neither did thinking that you might come back again in a new body after you die. If it's true or not isn't the issue. It doesn't need to be true for people to draw strength from it. I think this is some of what certain people have been trying to say on this thread. Personally I would advise letting that sink in a bit instead of just dismissing it because it isn't what you believe.

Now I'm well aware that many people find comfort in religion, find comfort in the belief that somebody's looking out for them, that they'll see the deceased members of their family again in the future, that there's some higher purpose to life. But that doesn't say anything about the truth of that belief.

I finally have a glimmer of hope with you. You're right. The point I was just making is that it doesn't need to be true for people to draw strength from it. If you or anyone else can only draw strength from facts, then that's great. But there are a lot of people on on this planet and not everyone can do that. My advice, once again, would be to take some time and let that sink in.

Religion comes with a huge amount of baggage. It's comforting to believe that when you die, you'll see your family again. But what if they didn't go to heaven, but went to hell instead? How can you find comfort in that possibility? What if you go to hell after you die? All it does is to perpetuate fear, and surely there can't be any comfort in fear. And this is just one example of the many problems that religion brings along.

I think what happens after we die is one of the biggest mysteries of life. We will all find out eventually and the "truth" as it were will become self evident. As for me, I don't know what will happen but I don't need to know to get through my day. I'm not a religious guy and the concept of life after death is an odd one for me to understand. I'll just have to die to find out, I guess.

Again, you're seeing problems where others would find comfort and I would say .... "who cares". To each his own.

R..

 

[AdivingBel]

Again, you're seeing problems where others would find comfort and I would say .... "who cares". To each his own.
R..

If it only could be left at that, many of us would walk away happily. Unfortunately with many organized religions that is not the case. You are taught to be "fishers of men." Many organized religions are designed to propagate, sometimes via consent, sometimes not (legislation, peer pressure, war etc. etc.). And that propagation can be couched in the most humane fashion..."I'm just worried about your soul." There in lies a big rub. It's not the only issue, but it's a big one, and it's one of the toughest for those of us who would dearly love to let bygones be bygones and let everyone just believe what they want and get on with life...