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Author Topic:   Star formation
Rahvin
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Posts: 4046
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 8.3


Message 10 of 39 (556367)
04-19-2010 11:46 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by killinghurts
04-18-2010 11:20 PM


1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
1:17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
Modern science explains the formation of stars from matter (wiki gives a reasonably good explanation Star formation - Wikipedia). There are no requirements for supernatural intervention.
So.. a pretty simple question:
If we can now explain the formation of stars without supernatural intervention, on what grounds does the bible claim god created them?
The basic issue here is the same as with most religious claims about natural origins:
Religious claims almost never have anything to do with an explanation of how. Instead, they assert to answer who. The Biblical account regarding star formation (or anything else, including the creation of the Sun, life, etc) very rarely touches on how, and when it does, it's in the most vague sense possible ("God made two lights"). It's about saying "God did it."
This is why most religious claims are completely unfalsifiable, and why religious claims regarding origins are scientifically useless.
It's like explaining the origins of a car by saying "Toyota made it." It tells you nothing of use as to how the car was made.
In the case of star formation, "God did it" fits just as well with naturalistic explanations (since God is proposed to be an omnipotent deity whose actions are indistinguishable from nature, ergo the need for faith, but who is also proposed to be responsible for everything) as with a more "I Dream of Jeannie" magic explanation.

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Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4046
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 8.3


Message 16 of 39 (556430)
04-19-2010 8:41 PM
Reply to: Message 15 by Peg
04-19-2010 8:03 PM


the fact is that matter is produced by energy and energy does not create itself....if it did we wouldnt need power-plants.
FALSE.
Completely false.
Matter is not produced by energy.
Neither matter nor energy can be created or destroyed.
Energy and matter are finite, and there is exactly the same amount of the two today as there was yesterday, 100 years ago, a million years ago, a billion years ago, all the way back to T=0. They simply change from one form into another - neither is ever created, neither is destroyed. One does not "produce" the other, except in the same way that light from the Sun "produces" heat, or ice "produces" water.

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 Message 15 by Peg, posted 04-19-2010 8:03 PM Peg has not replied

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