The TRUE reason for the EvC controversy, and why it can not be resolved.

But the reason you can't convert me to your perspective is that your perspective is based on assuming that your beliefs are unqestionably correct. If you had a good argument for the correctness of your beliefs there would be no problem. But the fact is that all you are doing is trying to avoid dealing with the evidence.And yes, you got it wrong again. I'm not tsuggestign that creationists beleive because they have a rational foundation for their beleifs. I am pointing out that other people DISBELIEVE - and are correct to do so - because you have no rational foundation for your beliefs.Your argument on radioactivity is badly wrong. C14 dating is something of a special case. There's no need for the isotopes in most radiodating to "build up". So what we would really expect to see is that no rocks would be older than the Fall. They would not appear to be older - rocks existing prior to the Fall might appear slightly younger, but only by the period between Creation and the Fall and the rest - including those you say were produced during the Flood should date correctly.
Your argument doesn't even work with C14 dating. Scientists know that the rate of C14 production varies and so to get more accurate dates they calibrate it against other dating methods (such as tree rings or varve deposition in lakes). And they haven't found your period when C14 is "building up". So if there is such a period it isn't even relevant to C14 dating, because it must have completed so long ago that it doesn't affect C14 dates.So your real problem is that you don't even understand the evidence you are supposed to be accounting for. So naturally you are in no position to understand whether your ideas can be made to fit the evidence or not. But how then can you argue that your ideas are reasonable when you are in no position to judge ?

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It matters not, whether or not the deception was active or passive; if the Fall occurred, then we have been deceived...
Is God not all-powerful, that He could not make it so that truth was preserved?

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It matters. Deception requires intent to deceive. - I think I've addressed this issue sufficiently in a previous post today.

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why do you believe that the Fall occurred, over the myriad other possibilities, some of which have supporting, corroborated evidence?

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That is what my christian faith requires me to believe. I think christians - not the "good guy" definition of the word - who believe in evolution practice double think:1. If God created us using evolution - which implies disease, hardship and death (DHD), it means these conditions are as God intended. What then exactly did Christ come to earth to save us from?2. If DHD is normal, why would God promise us eternal life after death?3. If God can give us life after death, why didn't He just create us immortal from the beginning?4. If there was no fall, then it means that God created us as sinfull people. It would therefore be unfair to punnish us for it.Unless you prefer to just ignore these theological contradictions, you simply can't believe in both Christianity and Evolution at the same time. I have my reasons to believe that the supernatural exists, and that christianity is the accurate description of that reality, but that is beyond the scope of this discussion. But I can offer you this: have you've ever heard of an ex-Satanist who is not a passionate Christian, or a Satanist converting to any other religion but Christianity?

It is not a sin for a christian to believe in evolution, but it is theological doublethink. How can you believe in the Solution, but not the problem?

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radioactive decay. Radioactive isotopes that are used in radiometric dating decay by two different processes: alpha decay and beta decay. These are different processes, governed by different physical laws, that have very little in common.

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You are making one huge mistake here. Our scientific knowledge is not complete. Before Newton, no one made the connection between stuff falling down, and planets going round the sun, because the unifying principle was not discovered yet.alpha decay and beta decay may well have little in common .... as far as we know. While the illusive search for the theory of everything is still going on, a unifying principle might still one day be found.Ofcause I have no idea what alpha decay and beta decay is, but if the fall did affect the laws of physics in some way, it doesn't really matter. As I said before: The creationist believe in creationism is not subject to his ability to explain it. His starting point for absolute truth is the Bible.

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You keep trying to suggest that your original claim is true and that the divide is becauseyour ideas about the Fall are rejected out of hand.

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Well, yes and no. I'm saying the creationist accept the fall as true, because his point of departure is the bible. You reject the bible - based on your reading of the natural evidence - and therefore your point of departure is nature as we see it today.What I believe to be true, vs what you believe to be true, is completely irrelevant to the discussion. What is relevant, is that I can not convince you of my position, and vice versa, because our ideas on what the nature of absolute truth is, differs. You believe you can falsify the bible based on what you see in nature, while the creationist believe that the bible is divine revelation, and that if our view of nature contradicts the core message of the bible, it is our view of nature that is at fault. In other words, the creationist view the Bible as a glimse of the full picture, and science as a yet uncompleted attempt to fill in the gaps. But since science is restricted to natural truth, and the bible is restricted to historic and spiritual truth, gaps might appear that seems unreconcilable. This inconsistancy is not due to the Bible being wrong, but due to us not reading the evidence right.Your requirement for "plausable scenario's" completely ignore what I'm trying to say, as what I'm saying does not stand or fall on my ability to provide those scenario's

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The "p13" part will help you, but not the "Faith post 6003" part. The information provided next to Faith's messages didn't say "Post 6003", but "Posts: 6003". It's the number of messages Faith has posted at EvC Forum since she registered. It is as of this writing at 6005 and will never return to 6003 again.

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I've noticed.

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So posting messages at EvC Forum is a job for you? Where do I apply? I hope they allow overtime!

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One of the reasons I'm always determined not to come back to this forum, is that I always end up spending a dangerous amount of time here. But lately, there hasn't been much work to do, and I've been bored silly, so here I am. Shhh. don't tell anyone

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What I have said, from the beginning of the thread, is that the TRUE reason for the EvC controversy is this: creationists look at science in a distorted way because they look at everything in a distorted way - including their own religion. That is pretty clear from your own posts.

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It doesn't matter what your world view is, people with other world views will always appear to have distorted world views, because you're interpreting theirs through your own. So, in a way, what you are saying here is exactly what I'm saying, and that is the reason why debating the issue of EvC will not make a difference, one way or the other.

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What I believe to be true, vs what you believe to be true, is completely irrelevant to the discussion. What is relevant, is that I can not convince you of my position, and vice versa, because our ideas on what the nature of absolute truth is, differs. You believe you can falsify the bible based on what you see in nature, while the creationist believe that the bible is divine revelation, and that if our view of nature contradicts the core message of the bible, it is our view of nature that is at fault.

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That is not a difference on the nature of absolute truth.What you actually mean is that you assume that the Bible as interpreted by creationists must be infallibly true no matter what other evidence shows. Which means that as I have been saying all along the divide is that creationists are closed-minded dogmatists who cannot accept the possiblity that their beliefs could be wrong.The caveat "as interpeted by creationists" is important because in my experience creationists aren't very good at interpreting the Bible. Too often they try to force-fit the text to their beliefs. So really creationism seems to have more to do with self-worship than Christianity or the Bible.

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Your requirement for "plausable scenario's" completely ignore what I'm trying to say, as what I'm saying does not stand or fall on my ability to provide those scenario's

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Wrong. What you originally claimed was the the reason for the divide was because those on the evolution side assumed naturalism and "uniformism". What I have been pointing out is that you are wrong. Even if we allowed that those assumptions could be false you still could not come up with a rational explanation for the evidence.As I say your position is that you have a closed mind so that any excuse to ignore the evidence against your view is acceptable to you, no matter how unreasonable it might be.

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radioactive decay is not lethal to begin with. Radiation is. The atom bombs did not use U-238, but the stable U-235. U-238 is what is used in radiometric dating, and is not lethal. splitting U-235 will most definetely be lethal, especially if you happen to be inside the blast range.

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As I said, it is only speculation. Someone with more knowledge may provide a better proposal, but it will remain speculation.But even if it is not lethal, we have no way of knowing if unstable particles existed back then, or whether they were a consequence of the fall. If they where, that might explain why the dating techniques are off. But you can't proof it one way or the other. It remains speculation.

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Even though this may well be off topic, i found this rather strange. how in the world would you convince a non-believer the flood happened?
if you only told them the story you have to add in a lot of things that would be impossible
most people who do not believe in the story already would not believe yo u the second you start talking about how 8 people and 2 each animal repopulated the earth much less how they survived to get were they live now
{aBE: as for natural causes, we barely can seem to move anywhere on that, no one seems to be willing to explain how anything could survive the amount energy released by the flood, much less where the rain went}

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I was speaking hypothetically, and the point I was making is that providing natural explainations for biblical events will not result in non-believers becoming believers. It will rather give them another reason not to believe in God.

That line of reasoning assumes there is 1) An eternal hell, and 2) a fall. I will point out that the Jewish religion, which the Christian religion gets Genesis from, does not believe in an eternal hell, nor does it believe in 'Original sin" and 'the fall' as christians see it.That condundrum does not exist in the Jewish faith, and therefore that line of reasoning does not hold.

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Your argument on radioactivity is badly wrong. C14 dating is something of a special case. There's no need for the isotopes in most radiodating to "build up". So what we would really expect to see is that no rocks would be older than the Fall. They would not appear to be older - rocks existing prior to the Fall might appear slightly younger, but only by the period between Creation and the Fall and the rest - including those you say were produced during the Flood should date correctly.
Your argument doesn't even work with C14 dating. Scientists know that the rate of C14 production varies and so to get more accurate dates they calibrate it against other dating methods (such as tree rings or varve deposition in lakes). And they haven't found your period when C14 is "building up". So if there is such a period it isn't even relevant to C14 dating, because it must have completed so long ago that it doesn't affect C14 dates.

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So your real problem is that you don't even understand the evidence you are supposed to be accounting for. So naturally you are in no position to understand whether your ideas can be made to fit the evidence or not. But how then can you argue that your ideas are reasonable when you are in no position to judge ?

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I knew you where just burning debate EvC itself, rather than the nature of that debate, however, I did give my disclaimer when I posted my scenario.

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But the reason you can't convert me to your perspective is that your perspective is based on assuming that your beliefs are unqestionably correct.

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And all I'm saying is "vice versa". You may be more questioning about your believes, but there are still some assumptions that you hold as absolute truth. One of which is that we are in a better position to understand the ancient world than the ancients themselves."If you had a good argument for the correctness of your beliefs there would be no problem."The problem is when you hear a eye witness account of someone who claims to have seen or experienced something which you believe to be scientifically impossible, you dismiss the witness. At the risk of offending our Muslim readers, let me put this to you. Did you know that more than 90% of all converts from Islam to Christianity are due to a miracle or a vision they saw? And they're all similar. As you can see in the news, it is not a minor issue for a Muslim to become a christian, asspecially in an Islamic country. The social rejection from even your closest friends and family is enourmous, and even your life is in danger.This is one of many "proofs" that I have that my faith is true. As this is of topic, I will not go into it further, but it is sufficiant to say, the evidence do not speak for themselves, you need to read it.

Yes, that works for one kind of physics. Let's say, radiodecay. But other fundamental laws of physics would also have to have changed, in exactly the right way.We would have needed a different speed of light (so that supernova 1987A for example would give us wrong dating using two different methods), the physics of coral biology would have to have changed by just the right amount, tree growth, ice cores, sedimentation/deposition, genetic mutations - the whole shebang. Each of the different laws of physics would have had to have been subtly altered in such a way as to provide a consistent series of dating methods across the board.Your distortion analogy works only for one law which was affected consistently in the past, but as more and more laws are affected each in a different way, there seems to be more and more of a coincidence/conscious act.

Hold on I'm not pointing out the problems with your scenario jsut because I'm "burning to discuss EvC", I'm making a point that is directly relevant to the argument here. What I'm pointing out is that not only do you not have an explanation for the physical evidence you have no prospect of one - ruling out intnetional deception by God.

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And all I'm saying is "vice versa". You may be more questioning about your believes, but there are still some assumptions that you hold as absolute truth. One of which is that we are in a better position to understand the ancient world than the ancients themselves.

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No, I don't. Please don't try to put words in my mouth.

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The problem is when you hear a eye witness account of someone who claims to have seen or experienced something which you believe to be scientifically impossible, you dismiss the witness

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I think what you mena is that I consider eyewitnesses to be less reliable than the understanding science can give us. Which would be correct - but it is not a unchallengable assumption as you wish to claim. And even if you could demonstrate that it was a problem - whcih you haven't done you cerrtainly get show that it is relevant unless you can produce eyewitness accounts that directly address the issues under discussion - AND allow for the fact that I have explicitly lowered the standards so that only some conflicts with science apply.

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At the risk of offending our Muslim readers, let me put this to you. Did you know that more than 90% of all converts from Islam to Christianity are due to a miracle or a vision they saw? And they're all similar.

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I put it to you that you are in no position to really know any such thing. I expect you've just seen someone make that claim - or one that sounds similar - and never checked what evidence there is to support it. I very much doubt that there has been the sort of organised and systematic survey there would need to be to actually find out.If I'm correct you are arguing that I should unquestiongly believe you because you unquestioningly believe things you would like to be true. That isn't a good reason.

What are you talking about?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion