Creationist Dishonesty!
"What you're about to see... There are no cameras."
He was mocking the big-bang theory with that. Kirk has argued before on the lines on intelligent design, such as, someone designed a tv camera and it didn't evolve itself from "nothingness".
I did based on the fact it must automatically preculde a false premise, be it magically appearing tapes they found, or an analogy.
The argument you mention is a modern electronics variant of the Watchmaker analogy, and was already refuted and televised:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No7UCB2meF0[/youtube]
AngelRho, if you can admit that parts of the Bible must be interpreted allegorically in order for them to make sense, can you not see that this leaves open the possibility that all of it is allegorical, a series of morality tales intended to inform choices, not replace them? That perhaps the tales of Daniel in the lion's den, or Noah in the Great Flood, might simply be intended to drive home the idea that faith in God can help you through the hardest of times, not to make you believe that there was an actual historical person who built a tiny craft out of wood and managed to cram breeding populations of every animal on Earth aboard?
In other words, maybe the Big Bang happened 14 billion years ago because a Being existing outside the concept of space/time willed it so (hey, it's as good an explanation as any other - ask any honest cosmologist), and the rest occurred because of the starting conditions set up in that Bang. Maybe the description given in Genesis 1 is as close as one can come to explaining cosmology to a group of itinerant shepherds with no concept of numbers higher than maybe a hundred, and Genesis 2 (which disagrees with it) is a "just-so" story to explain why men and women are so different. Maybe the Bible should be taken as a book of religious instruction, not a book of scientific or historical instruction. (I specify "Bible" because my understanding is that the source material, the Torah, is already treated that way by Judaism.)
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Sodium is a metal that reacts explosively when exposed to water. Chlorine is a gas that'll kill you dead in moments. Together they make my fries taste good.
In other words, maybe the Big Bang happened 14 billion years ago because a Being existing outside the concept of space/time willed it so (hey, it's as good an explanation as any other - ask any honest cosmologist), and the rest occurred because of the starting conditions set up in that Bang. Maybe the description given in Genesis 1 is as close as one can come to explaining cosmology to a group of itinerant shepherds with no concept of numbers higher than maybe a hundred, and Genesis 2 (which disagrees with it) is a "just-so" story to explain why men and women are so different. Maybe the Bible should be taken as a book of religious instruction, not a book of scientific or historical instruction. (I specify "Bible" because my understanding is that the source material, the Torah, is already treated that way by Judaism.)
Galileo once said the Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go.
ruveyn
It really does contradict a literal reading of the text, as the text suggests that each day is directly after the other. "There was evening and there was morning, the next day". If someone told me a story in that kind of framework, I would regard it as a misreading to regard the days as having significant separation between them. If it seems a misreading, then it does contradict the literal reading of the text. If one, in deciding a literal meaning of a text, does not use these kinds of clues, or uses them in an ad hoc manner, then one is not really going off of a literal reading so much as picking and choosing.
Well, most Bibles say "The earth was without form and void", such as the KJV, the ESV, and the RV, and then say that God hovered above the waters. This does not really suggest anything of the sort that you are saying, as it moves from God creating both Heaven and Earth to God working with the Earth, as the Earth has to exist before it lacks form or has waters.
Well, probably not. I mean, "let the dry land appear is in Gen 1:9". Now, I suppose one could take a hermeneutic that anything can happen in the gaps within the Bible so long as it is theologically convenient, but this hardly seems like a good work of hermeneutics, but rather about as postmodern as hermeneutics could come, as generally speaking holding to a text literally involves being parsimonious about it, otherwise why not hold to the text allegorically?
What's really the debate? The exegetical foundations are so loose that we might as well assume that Jesus also had children with Mary Magdalene for that manner. The Bible doesn't say this isn't the case after all, and certainly there is some possible ambiguity that one could use.
Right.....
The issue is words do not directly translate between languages. So, while different translators might make similar assumptions, this does not mean that people who don't know the language are getting everything that is said.
One, there are hypothetical answers given about the eye. Secondly, it has been shown even in a US court for goodness sake, that ID wasn't science. Thirdly, the human eye is horribly designed, giving us an unnecessary blindspot, this is not a sign of any God, so much as a god of the gaps.
No, but I am willing to listen to the people who do study these matters, as opposed to listening to loonies. As such, I am not challenging these people on their fields of expertise like a moron. It is clear to anybody who has knowledge of science, the scientific community, or the general sociology of the matter that creationism is BS that is kept alive by theological interests, as such, I don't seem dismissal as requiring the same level of intellectual command as acceptance. Generally speaking, experts are given more epistemic authority than know-nothings.
Honestly, I probably have a much better grasp of young earth creationism than you have of evolutionary theory. Even further, if I say that the two aren't even close to epistemic equals then my acts as a critic are more justifiable than your acts as a critic, at least so long as my claim of epistemic inequality is justifiable. The fact of the matter is that you aren't informed to a sufficient degree to criticize people who have spent their lives studying something and who actually know what they are talking about. I have enough information, however, to criticize backwater crackpots on a nonsense idea. Let's even make a comparison: Can everybody meaningfully criticize germ theory? No. Can a lot of people meaningfully criticize homeopathic remedies though? Of course, because they're nonsense that can't pass the muster anywhere.