Badoodle-boo-yeah! You just got served a SPREAD of TRUTH by the Cool Coach! Urban out.

An interesting proposition was made by another person much like myself, John Sailhamer, one of the world’s foremost authorities on Classical Hebrew. The proposition suggests that not only are many young earthers mistaken in their science, but they are mistaken in the point of the Genesis One. He looks at the the Pentateuch completely as literature; his only concern as a scholar is the authorial meaning. (The first five books of the Tanak, OT, form a very coherent, strategic, and intelligent peice of literature.) He maintains that the God of the Pentateuch is not “creating” the cosmos in the statements of chapter one, “Day One, Day Two,” but he is preparing the land (i.e. the promised land, canaan). The term “haerets” means land in Hebrew and is most often used in the Pentateuch to refer to the land promised to the seed of Abraham. There were other medieval rabbis who also took the passage this way.

I think the book he presents his findings in is called “The Genesis Flood.” A very respectable scholar who deals with the ancient text. The text itseld may say nothing about the age of the earth or how it was created. It only says that the God of the Pentateuch is responsible for it.

For that matter, Newtonian mechanics is superceded by relativity theory, but it is still damn good for computing orbits of planets etc.

About magenta canopy in the sky: does the Bible use the word “magenta” anywhere? For that matter, I do not even recall anything described as “pink”. Are pink and magenta legitimate colors or some godless humanist inventions? Modest proposal number one: check which colors are real, i.e. which colors are mentioned in the Bible.

Modest proposal number two: the flood story does not make much sense unless Ararat was the highest mountain. Check which mountains are real, and which are godless humanist inventions (like Mt. Kinley in Alaska).

Until I get that check for a few grand, I’m not going to spend time doing endless follow-ups with you in which I site references to data sources and whatnot. You can look this stuff up for yourself.

The Occam’s razor reference is interesting however.

I’m guessing, though it’s not clear, that you’re arguing that Humphrey’s distaste for “complex” scientific explanations is supported by Occam’s razor. (If that’s not what you were arguing, it should have been, because it’s actually a mildly clever point).

In a sense, Occam’s razor DOES support creationism. “God did it” is, in fact, the simplest explanation for a lot of things. Shorten “God did it” to the single word “magic” and it is ALWAYS the simplest explanation for ANYTHING:

Question: “Why does the pitch of a car horn sound higher as the car approaches and lower as the car recedes?

1) “Sound waves, Doppler shift, etc., etc., blah blah.”

2) “Magic”

Obviously #2 is simpler. But it’s not useful and it’s not science. It doesn’t give you a theory you can test, and it doesn’t give you information that you can build on to increase your understanding of the world. That’s why science, by definition, doesn’t use the “magic” explanation. You can use it for anything, and it tells you nothing.

There are probably literally millions of instances in the history of science where the evidence has allowed for only two alternative explanations: “Magic”, or “we don’t understand this phenomenon well enough yet.” Scientists have always chosen the latter alternative, and looked deeper, found the information needed to explain the phenomenon, and added to the world’s knowledge. That’s what scientists do; that’s what science is.

And that’s why creationism isn’t science.

#1: What does seeing galaxies that appear to be billions of light years away really tell us as it concerns evolution?

#2. requires further explanation

#3. actually, if you follow Occam’s Razor, which suggests that given a choice between explanations, one should choose the simplest, the explanation which requires the fewest assumptions, then some of that grade school text book stuff doesn’t look too bad. Although most scientists follow this logic, I must admit, I am not entirely sold on it.

#4. I’m not sure you’ve adequately made a case for Humphey’s alleged intellectual dishonesty. In what respect has he llied about the data?

Actually, I should add that (though this may just be my lack of faith talking), I believe that the Genesis account of creation may not be one that was meant to interpret literally. Having said that, I believe that one day our understanding of evolution will more closely approximate the biblical account than the Darwinian account.

They’d enjoy him over at the ‘Hounds, though.

I was going to say something about the weight-delta-ignoring comparison of F-14 vs. pterodactyl aerodynamics…but this unexpected sighting of a legendary, recycled troll has stolen my pre-Flood breath away.

Have at him. Hours of fun, and no messy clean-up!

It’s no damnin’ matter
It’s no cardinal crime….

I tell you you should go read a high school science textbook, and your response is to ask me to write one for you. Pay me a few grand, and I’ll give it a shot. Meanwhile, here’s an abridged version to get you started:

Humphreys #1: Oh dear, our understanding of how spiral galaxies have preserved their shape is incomplete. Therefor the universe is 6,000 years old. And yet the fact that we can SEE galaxies that are billions of light years away isn’t a problem for Humphreys.

Humphreys #2: He’s courteous enough to include the explanation of what he considers a problem; he just states, without support, that this explanation isn’t “substantiated.” He’s wrong; there is plenty of evidence of the existence of the Oort cloud and the Kuiper belt.

Humphreys #3: Mud becomes sedimentary rock. This isn’t high school science, it’s grade school science. Perhaps Humphreys was out sick that day in fifth grade.

Humphreys #4: Yep, there’s not enough salt in the ocean. Especially if you use real data when you talk about how salt gets into the sea and lie about the data on how it gets out.

And so on. When this idiot mentions what “evolutionists” say in response to his fictional problems, one of his most-repeated complaints is that the responses involve theories that are “complex.” Obviously anything that’s hard to understand must be wrong.

If you want to continue deluding yourself, I strongly urge that you stay away from websites like [http://www.gate.net/~rwms/crebuttals.html]. Something you WON’T find on the web is a list of all the evidence that supports evolution and an old universe. These theories are so all-encompassing and so utterly _required_ for any rational understanding of so many countless observations that there’s simply no hope of “listing” all the evidence in favor of them.

Dr. PB&J is right, you know. I’ve visited 3005 A.D., and in those days, gravity pulls up rather than down, atoms are the size of marshmallows (and just as tasty!), and the Easter Bunny is real. Amazing what a few paradigm shifts will do.

BLT, what you don’t know about science would fill a high school textbook. In fact, it DOES fill a high school textbook. You should try reading one sometime.

Your position is that because science can’t “prove” anything, it’s okay to believe whatever you want.

Science isn’t in the business of “proving” things in the mathematical sense. Science only gathers evidence to support or refute theories. Many things have been proven by science if you use a more human definition of “proof.” As in “the following evidence is sufficient that anyone should consider the theory of evolution to be proven, unless they’re a fucking idiot.”

And if there should be some dramatic, Copernican paradigm shift in biology, do you really expect “Doctor” Baugh to contribute to it in any way, or even to be pleased with the new paradigm to come?

As a psychologist, I am constantly bombarded with studies, and I’ve conducted a few of my own. I’ve never proven or disproven anything by my studies, and neither have any of my colleages.

Then you state:

Scientific studies can’t prove a thing.

Oh for crying out loud. It’s one thing to claim that about psychology, where quantifiable evidence is very difficult to come by, but absurd to make a similar claim about physics, chemistry, biology, and astronomy. Mountains of evidence have been gathered in all those fields and others. Innumerable things have been proven. The fact that theories are adjusted to reflect new and better experimental evidence or to correct mistakes are not flaws of science, but, indeed its backbone and strength. This is a flaw in understanding science and scientific method that typifies wingnuttus Americanus.

I was being sarcastic, Marq, but hopefully you knew that.

Yeah, I knew-I just can’t resist ruining a joke with facts. :-P Sorry!
Continuing on the logical picking apart of Genesis (one of the two silliest books of the Bible-the other being Revelations), yes that whole “God not knowing whether Adam and Eve would eat the fruit” and “Adam and Eve being ignorant of right and wrong” are quite true. But what of the original situation? God had Adam and Eve frolicking about naked as jaybirds. But, evidently, this was sinful and bad, for once they partook of the fruit they knew to cover themselves up. So, if it was so bad, why would God be contented to allow Adam and Eve sin every day of their lives? What was he planning to do, allow them to sin until they died and then hit them with, “Aha! You dirty sinners, you sinned every day! It’s off to hell with you! “