Neil deGrasse Tyson vs. Young Earth Creationism

reply to post by jjkenobi


Maybe because they are the most vocal about denying evolution.

reply to post by Krazysh0t


I live in a small universe, lol. And who knows, we may have only mapped 1% of the universe.

reply to post by the2ofusr1

Ok so if you are at one end and I at the other end and we look away from each other what would we see ? Unless you are suggesting there is no center of the universe but I can't imagine how that could be .

Consider the universe as the surface of a balloon (it isn't, but it is a useful mind picture).

What is 'one end of the universe'? What is 'the other end of the universe'?

reply to post by rnaa


Well your analogy reminds me of my dad telling me one time about fishing a brook that was so crooked that he met himself going around one of the bends in it .I guess its all about mental gymnastics .At times I feel like I am being conned into believing stuff just because a smart person is saying it's so .I like the electric universe model mostly because its simple and I can make simple sense of it ....peace

jjkenobi
Attacking young earth creationism is just an easy target that makes people feel smart and smug about themselves. There are many other creationism theories but this is the only one that gets attention.

Watch a Kent Hovind video and you'll see smugness personified

Creationists attempt to get their beliefs taught to children in public schools asthough what they believe is actual science.....and as the OP shows, it isn't.

So it could be said they (creationists) paint big fat bullseyes on their foreheads themselves.

Creationism how WE are taught/told is not science.

As a believer in intelligent design, i'm not sure how/who/why/where/when. So therefore, not knowing this, i can't say it's definitely NOT science.

MrConspiracy
Creationism how WE are taught/told is not science.

As a believer in intelligent design, i'm not sure how/who/why/where/when. So therefore, not knowing this, i can't say it's definitely NOT science.

Intelligent design is merely Creationism with a cheap lab coat on. What we are taught/told about Creationism is really all there is.........as it's just a belief

Creationism to science is what processed food is to a healthy diet.

Creationism and Evolution both require "Faith" or "confidence" or "belief".

If you believe in creationism then you are putting faith in the words and wisdom that have been passed down for centuries and heavily translated and transcribed. (A personal choice)

Evolution requires the same in the discoveries of human beings who are testing things relative to the world as they know it. I'm sure to get ripped for this but come on. Science is just as far fetched as creationism if you have a COMPLETELY open mind.

Science can ONLY prove what the observer sets out to prove.

Creationism can ONLY prove (In hypothetical ways) that someone at some point wrote this stuff down and it apparently gained enough popularity to spread.

I think the real fascinating part of all of this that the ACTUAL truth (Should we ever be fortunate to discover it or be told of a key discovery with regards to it..Something else similar to the Higgs Boson)
is that it is most likely a little bit of a mixture of both.

I know people bring up the fact that the story being told to Moses is handed down and this is vital.
Perhaps the science they had way back when brought forth a particular understanding much like the ones we have in our midst today. Back before written languages were common and books and such were somewhat widely available. Most of these stories WOULD have been passed down and across from generation to generation and perhaps ethnicity to ethnicity and so on and so forth.

From creationism to evolution. I prefer to think that the real truth is more Amazing that either and that both can be used and studied by an intellectual person to develop their own deeply personal opinion of the matter. Whether or not that true opinion is allowed to be expressed outwardly by the ego is a whole different matter. I do somewhat agree also with what the late and great Carl Sagan said.

"It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas . . . If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you . . . On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones."

Because when you really look at it. The real truth will be the newest most unthinkable perhaps unattainable truth their is. The question then becomes.. are we better off never knowing completely?

To me the stories are so similar. Reading older gospels such as that of Bartholomew and Mary..ones not typically in the western christian cannon.

Reading Bartholomew (Nathaniel) describe witnessing Satan and how he was cast out of heaven makes it seem as if there are two stories to creation as far fetched as it seems. The "Creation" was the universe in the beginning. The casting out of Satan brought about the "Universe" which is a simulation and copied version of the creator (God/Singularity). Almost like a self starting weather system that began when the right elements were formed. Missed by a lot who are "Christians" and even believers is the fact that technically if those stories are true than "Earth" belongs to Satan. God is both Good and Evil. He is everything.
Satan is Pepsi to God's Coca Cola.
God has the monopoly but Satan will constantly try to counter.
Even evolution in my opinion lends itself to a creator or creation system through the laws of the universe in some fashion. Just considering how science works (from what we believe to know or have hypothesized) from photo-synthesis to and jet engines, cell phones and lasers to space travel to satellites in space to the variety of animals and humans and plants it almost seems as if the main purpose of the Universe is merely to exist. We can know that there must be some reason because we can see it, if there was none everyone would perhaps be blind. (CS Lewis) Also the universe is punched by got and countered by Satan at every point of the universe.

I don't know what the real truth is but the fact is it is most likely more spectacular (as I've previously mentioned) than any simple human is able to understand.
At the end of the day.. singularity or God or nothing. We are still even less than nothing.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. -Carl Sagan

Whatever it is. Open minds to all. I do believe as I've said before. With God.. the only thing he would be truly intolerable of... is intolerance of others and differing opinions. This..Is perhaps why the Universe is so F'n big.

Shalom Brothers.

Well, to be fair, creationism is science, just psuedo-science. That's what the better minds have coined creationism in a nutshell.

Or as I'd like to call it, "fluffed up non-sensical feel good garbage."

the2ofusr1
One question that has always puzzled me was that if you look in one direction to the end of the universe and then look in the opposite direction do we end up being in the center or is one way further than the other ?

The Universe is like sphere. Imagine the globe. It has a two dimensional surface. There are no edges and no center. If we were two dimensional creatures we could look or travel in any direction and never find the edge.

Now, imagine that the Universe is a four dimensional sphere with a three dimensional surface and we live on the surface. We can look in all directions and not find any edges. But, this sphere is expanding like a balloon being blown up. I you place dots on the balloon surface, these dots would all be moving away from each other as the balloon expanded. And, the farther apart the dots, the faster they would be moving apart.

Can we look through a telescope and see ourselves? In theory yes, but in practice it would be so long ago that we wouldn't recognize ourselves. In fact, it would take the light longer to circumnavigate the Universe than the Universe has been in existence. So no, it can't happen.

RedShirt73
reply to post by the2ofusr1

 

The universe maybe vastly older and bigger than we thought, we just have no way of knowing this as our technology can only see so far out into the universe.

The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that describes the early development of the Universe, which is calculated to have begun 13.798 ± 0.037 billion years ago.
Planck collaboration (2013). "Planck 2013 results. XVI. Cosmological parameters". Submitted to Astronomy & Astrophysics. arXiv:1303.5076. Bibcode:2013arXiv1303.5076P.

The observable universe is about 46 billion light years in radius.

Itzhak Bars; John Terning (November 2009). Extra Dimensions in Space and Time. Springer. pp. 27–. ISBN 978-0-387-77637-8. Retrieved 2011-05-01.

Do some research before you make such claims. We now a lot about the Universe. Just because you don't know it, doesn't mean that it's not known.

reply to post by Galileo400


Are you saying the universe is circular or that it folds back on its self because when I think of a balloon I imagine a round object? I am still a bit confused though. I understand the telescope is theoretical but it only can see in a strait direction I just do not understand how that can bend around the "balloon" so we see ourselves. Can you clear this up?

WhoWhatWhenWhere2420
Science can ONLY prove what the observer sets out to prove.

Then you really do not understand the scientific process. One does not set about trying to prove one's theory, you try to disprove it so what remains are verifiable evidence or processes.

Grimpachi
reply to post by Galileo400

 

Are you saying the universe is circular or that it folds back on its self because when I think of a balloon I imagine a round object? I am still a bit confused though. I understand the telescope is theoretical but it only can see in a strait direction I just do not understand how that can bend around the "balloon" so we see ourselves. Can you clear this up?

Yes, I'm saying that our 3D space folds back on itself. But, because of the incredibly slow speed of light, when we look far away we see what the Universe looked like a long time ago, not how it looks today.

A circle is a 2D object with a finite 1D "surface" with no edges. (Let that sink in for a moment.)
A sphere is a 3D object with a finite 2D surface with no edges. (More soaking time)
The Universe is a finite (but expanding) 3D volume with no edges.

Therefore, by extension, the Universe must be a 4D sphere. If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, maybe it's a duck; or to use language for the man on the street, Occam's razor.

Hope this helps.

reply to post by AugustusMasonicus

Then you really do not understand the scientific process. One does not set about trying to prove one's theory, you try to disprove it so what remains are verifiable evidence or processes.

Which means if and when God is finally proven, it will most likely be by an atheist.

reply to post by WhoWhatWhenWhere2420

Evolution requires the same in the discoveries of human beings who are testing things relative to the world as they know it. I'm sure to get ripped for this but come on. Science is just as far fetched as creationism if you have a COMPLETELY open mind.

Assume the position and continue to share with us your most outrageously wrong statements so we can all laugh and be rendered speachless by demonstrations of inconceivable ignorance.
I find it highly entertaining.

Evolution is pseudo science and is not even a theory, it is by definition a hypothesis since it cannot be reproduced by scientific experiment. If it can't be reproduced with experimentation it is not science. Here is one persons take on the subject.

"The fact that so many people religiously believe the most unlikely and implausible explanation for where the most sophisticated objects in the known universe (living things) originated is the best evidence of this global conspiracy.

The utter obsurdity of this unproven speculation that somehow something as complex as even a single cell could manifest on its own in a pool of chemicals is mind boggling. Add to that the complexity of DNA and it becomes not just implausible but impossible.

Why do so many people believe this so easily while scrutinizing everything else so carefully. This seams to be the one area where otherwise scientific minded people choose to believe in magic. This is why I and I believe many others have labeled evolution not an observable or provable science but in fact a religion.

Many people I believe have been bullied into a middle ground stance that life was created to evolve which makes very little sense as well since there are no transitional fossils on record. Every past so called evidence of transitional species has been eventually proven phony such as pig tooth man better known as Nebraska man.

Pig tooth man was portrayed in true propaganda style on the news as the missing link. If the news propaganda machine does this in any other arena critical thinkers and conspiracy theorists would instantly see the seeds of conspiracy, but with evolution we have been programmed/indoctrinated that any explanation other than evolution is just plain ignorance. I wonder how many times I will be bullied and called ignorant for presenting these facts.

In classrooms all over the world and on every nature/science show that I have seen in my lifetime evolution is presented as fact. I never hear them say “Scientists speculate” before mentioning the subject. Why is something with nothing but circumstantial evidence being presented as factual science? I know what the religious fanatics will say, but if it cannot be observed and reproduced than it is not science.

Opposing evolution in the modern day is like opposing any other prevalent religion in the past. Persecution is what follows.

It seems evident to me that species were created to sustain themselves within a given set of parameters, thus variations can and should occur. One species changing to another more complex species defies logic. The line given is usually as follows “slight genetic mutations over time, survival of the fittest and abracadabra humans are born”. The problem I see with this is that there has never been a case of a genetic mutation that was beneficial to an animal or human. What they call genetic mutations the general public calls birth defects and although they might not all be crippling none of them are beneficial or an improvement upon the norm.

Let the name calling begin.

Here is another perhaps more coherent analysis of the subject.

www.icr.org..."


www.abovetopsecret.com...

Rather than posing questions to me about this simple truth, I will defer to the thread that I have linked.

reply to post by beegoodbees


And what is your preferred alternative theory? What would you replace evolution with, as the superior theory of human origins?

reply to post by AfterInfinity


Though I am not affiliated with any religion I do believe in some form of creation because nothing comes from nothing and "it didn't just get up and walk away all on it's own" has always seemed to be a pretty reasonable statement to me.