(02-19-2014, 01:01 PM)JoelCarli Wrote: [ -> ]Hmm, that's actually an interesting argument, considering a lot of the galaxies we can see (through telescopes, mind you) are so far away that they don't even technically exist anymore, and that what we're actually seeing is the light from them that took billions of years to arrive here.
Yeah, that was what I was thinking about. Dinosaur-bones in the ground, maybe, but photons placed 10 000 years away to look like they're coming from 26 billion years away? That just seems excessive.
If you're assuming a being who can create and organize matter at will though, creating photons and putting them in organized streams isn't really any more difficult than creating anything else. I mean you can literally create photons by colliding particles and anti-particles, so even if for some bizarre reason photons can't be created directly, any being that can create and organize matter would be able to create and organize photons. And they wouldn't have to be 10,000 light years away, there could be a stream from earth to a point that is actually 26 billion years away, or however far. (I guess it wouldn't be quite as far because stars don't live that long, but you get the idea, there doesn't have to be any weird "closer than they look" effect.)
My point was that from my understanding of your justification for creationism, the world was created as if it was continuing from an earlier point of creation, so to speak. Bascially, there is a disctinct timeline, but world doesn't actually exist at the beginning of it. Thus, from an astronomical perspective, the world is quite similiar now to when it began 10k years ago. Generalizing this a bit, we can model aspects of how the world was the moment it was made by just freezing time right no
w. At this moment, 10 000 light-years away, there is light travelling from stars that, by the time they reach earth, the stars they originated from will be more than 10^10 light-years away. Those photons would have been warped in different ways, from effects they hadn't even experienced due to the world not existing then.
If the galaxy was created 10k years ago, but wasn't created looking like it had started a long time earlier, then physicists would presumably notice. And if it was created 10k years ago, but it's moment of creation appeared just as the continuation of a line of events, well, why on earth would God bother with that?
Another explanation would be that only earth was created 10k years ago, but I don't really get that?
Basically, how does this ad hoc work, and why is it preferably to the the slice of occam's razor it originates from?
I dunno, ask God why he did it, if thats what he did, haha. Maybe he just figured things would be boring otherwise.
The point isn't to come up with a scientific theory that supersedes current knowledge. The idea is more to just show that it is possible for a fairly literal biblical creation account to give rise to the universe we know today in a way that does not contradict any of our current scientific understanding.
(02-20-2014, 12:40 AM)Danjo Wrote: [ -> ]I dunno, ask God why he did it, if thats what he did, haha. Maybe he just figured things would be boring otherwise.
The point isn't to come up with a scientific theory that supersedes current knowledge. The idea is more to just show that it is possible for a fairly literal biblical creation account to give rise to the universe we know today in a way that does not contradict any of our current scientific understanding.
In many ways, it gets even easier when taking into account that the translation of the first chapter of genesis isn't nearly perfect. Just gonna quote
wikipedia:
Wikipedia Wrote:The word bara is translated as "created" in English, but the concept it embodied was not the same as the modern term. In the world of the ancient Near East, the gods demonstrated their power over the world not by creating matter but by fixing destinies: so the essence of the bara which God performs in Genesis concerns bringing "heaven and earth" (a set phrase meaning "everything") into existence by organising and assigning roles and functions.[26]
Basically, it's quite possible that genesis originally meant that God
shaped the world, not created it (or maybe he did, but not within the timeframe of the bible?).
Although I haven't really thought out the implications of this - they are so many :3 -, it does have some interesting potential for unifying Genesis chapter 1 with scientific knowledge.
Btw, Sam, do you speak hebrew?
Edit: Although Noah isn't really part of creation, unless the term somehow incorporates all of Genesis, but he does kinda mess up literary biblicism.
Yeah. I mean obviously no matter what you came up with logically a lot of people would just be like "Christian fag! Go shove your theory up your ass!". But being able to come up with a logically consistent theory would make me feel better anyway.
(02-20-2014, 12:53 AM)ln cognition Wrote: [ -> ]Btw, Sam, do you speak hebrew?
I don't. It's one of my goals to learn it some day, but right now...yeah, way too busy trying to graduate and get a job. And get married. And somehow play RPGs because they keep me from being super-stressed all the damn time.
(02-20-2014, 01:17 AM)crazysam23 Wrote: [ -> ] (02-20-2014, 12:53 AM)ln cognition Wrote: [ -> ]Btw, Sam, do you speak hebrew?
I don't. It's one of my goals to learn it some day, but right now...yeah, way too busy trying to graduate and get a job. And get married. And somehow play RPGs because they keep me from being super-stressed all the damn time.
Play hebrew rpg's? But yeah, I get that. Especially if you don't really have a practical use for it atm, but might want to know it by the time you have kids growing up. (Which may not apply at all)
(02-20-2014, 12:59 AM)Danjo Wrote: [ -> ]Yeah. I mean obviously no matter what you came up with logically a lot of people would just be like "Christian fag! Go shove your theory up your ass!". But being able to come up with a logically consistent theory would make me feel better anyway.
Yeah, I've been trying not to load my fedora with live rounds and shoot to kill. Not that I'd every use fag as a derogatory term to non-smokers.
I appreciate you guys not calling me dumb. Probably the only place on the internet that I could get away with talking about this.