woot, if you are hoping to score a few more points, you can forget it. The sound of yapping lapdogs is never particularly informative.

>>It's a joke, you were pulled out on all your claims and assertions without any evidence that you were using just to try to disparage people standing up for what they see is right. You were called on it, pointed out your fallacy in your argument, and just keep switching tack to try and maintain a position.<<

Unfortunately, you cannot change the facts, as much as you seem to want to try.

The evidence is here, recorded sequentially from the first post to this one. And it tells a story far different from that which you claim.

Disparaging people standing up for what they see is right?

Hardly.

Questioning the intent, objectives and positioning of the convention shouldn't constitute any real threat to you self-appointed guardians of atheistic righteousness.

But from your collective reactions, it certainly seems to have exposed a nerve somewhere, doesn't it?

I wonder why.

"For me to be convinced there may be something in the 6,000 year old earth story, evolution would have to be debunked. But if that happened, then it would mean that science has everything wrong and we might as well all curl up and die, as nothing would be real." - David

No. Science could accommodate a 6,000 year old Earth, given adequate evidence. Here, the current model would have been disproved, not science (methodology). In this way, the Solid State universe is now just a memory.

Good science should hold posits tentatively and in this sense be willing to test to see if "everything is wrong".

Alternatively, continued belief in Creationism is obstinate, in the face of contradictory evidence.

Good scientists will cut away cherished beliefs in the face of good evidence to do so. Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawkins and others, admitted when they are wrong. Religionists are more relunctant to come clean about err, especially, when so much falls under -human churches advocated- doctrines, like "infallibility".

Because science is so accommodating, science sits in the present. In constrast, religionism requires archarism to sustain itself.

Oliver,

I think you missed my point. If the world were to proven to be 6,000 years) old (Meaning also the universe is that age) it would mean that the speed of light was not constant throughout time or was started midstream to fool earthlings, that therefore dating methods would be wrong, that the moon was placed in situ and its history as we know it, false, That ice cores and tree rings were a trick, that plate tectonics also began at a predetermined arbitrary time, that fossilised remains were planted, that erosion and deposit would not tie up with the facts, that the deeper into strata the more simpler organisms would have no explanation, that dinosaur fossils strata without the presence of human and modern animal fossils had no reason, that the universal fact that there are no human fossils below dinosaur fossil strata was luck, that multiple strata layers were the result of chance occurrences (On a large scale) etc.

Science as it is could not accommodate a 6,000 year old earth at all. The only thing that could is if magic was involved to make it look like the earth and the universe were old. Or, if you like, a magician has lied to us. If this is the case, nothing is real except in the mind of the magician.

Thinking like this is a sure road to delusion and/or madness.

Are you trying to be contrary for the sake of it, dear Oliver? If you are, in doing so, you give dummy ammunition to those who would use it to bring down actual scientific inquiry.

I know you continue with a better explanation of science but creationism depends on selective facts and one must be careful in not helping them out in fooling themselves and their followers in this regard.

David

Dear David,

Of course, I do recognize that a 6,000 year old Earth would turn science, the sciences, in fact, upside down. But revolutions have occurred in the past, from Copernicus to Quantum Mechanics. I was not seriously advocating Creationism. I think you know that. Rather, I was underlining the objectivity and rigour of Science vis-à-vis Creationism.

What if the universe is five septillion years old and our measurement of the Big Bang and the inflating universe merely local phenomena, within our light horizon of 4-D space-time? I realize such a finding would unlikely unseat geophysics pertaining to ageing the Earth and how light transverses the universe, yet science might need change its thinking along scales of magnitude, between BB and the larger universe, greater than that between the Bible account and the BB.
Were this speculation to be realized (difficult because communication cannot travel faster than light in a vacuum and there would need to be isolated zones of inflation), science would take it on the chin. Science is a process in continuously play and that is its strength.

Actually, I suspect, when we better understand the dimension of time, concepts of creation will become moot, because other physics will exist independent of our common experience of cause-and-effect.
I engage religionists better understand their reasoning and to test my null hypothesis.

What intrigues me about Christian posters is their readiness to assume Elohim-Jehovah-Jesus as god, without first testing the construct “god” or assessing other gods. They sort of just “fall-in” into it.

I think the behavioural sciences and perhaps neurology might be better placed as explaining religionism. A concept different to cosmology competing with myths.

O.

Oliver,

I knew we were in agreement but I had to make the point for others who might not have recognised that.

I also agree that the beauty of science is that it does adapt to new knowledge whilst not necessarily discarding the old. Your example of an extremely ancient universe is a very good one in that regard.

Religion too ‘adapts’ to new knowledge…eventually, but causes havoc until it does. It is forever playing catch-up.

At the moment abiogenesis has many religionists road-blocked but when that is overcome, and I am sure it will be, our faithful friends will then play on the fact that, “Where did the non living matter which created living matter come from?” God of course.

Meanwhile children are indoctrinated with the impossibility of abiogenesis to support other cranky ideas. And politics are skewed as well. It’s the same as killing those who supported a heliocentric view of reality.

Religion has to wake up to itself and try to grasp the reality that their wild guesses create social, political and planetary havoc.

Talking of havoc, the Atheist Foundation of Australia Inc and the Global Atheist Convention web site are under Cyber attack. This has been ongoing for just under a day and both sites can no longer be accessed. So be patient, folks, if you cannot log on to them.

My heavy workload will disallow me answering for a day or two.

David

While the AFA site is down, updates on the DDoS attack are available here:

http://www.atheistnexus.org/group/aussiekiwisouthpacificatheists/forum/topics/afa-under-attack