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submitted 6 hours ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[-] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 35 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Technically this could all be true even if the universe were created 4000 years ago. As somebody says in Robert Heinlein's novel Job: A Comedy of Justice, "Yes, the universe is billions of years old, but it was created 4000 years ago. It was created old." (approximate quote from memory)

I absolutely agree with science, but strictly speaking we can't know for sure the universe isn't the creation of some superbeing operating outside of it - or it could even be a simulation.

[-] nickhammes@lemmy.world 21 points 1 hour ago

We can't prove that the world we live in wasn't created last Thursday, with our memories, the growth rings in trees, and so on created by a (near) omnipotent trickster to deceive us. But science and rationality give us tools for determining what's worth taking seriously, and sorting out the reasonable, but unconfirmed, claims from the unverifiable hogwash.

[-] can@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Further reading on Wikipedia

[-] madeinthebackseat@lemmy.world 4 points 51 minutes ago

We can't know anything with 100% certainty. We can always imagine some razzle-dazzle, imagined scenario to counter the rational explanation if we like.

The point of the scientific method and logical reasoning is to pick the explanation with the most evidence.

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 hour ago

The existence of a god is something that can't be disproven. You can always find gaps in knowledge and explain the gap by saying a god / multiple gods did that. As gaps narrow with more knowledge, you can always just say that the holy books were just a metaphor in this one case, but the rest of it is literally true.

It gets even more complicated when you run into people who refuse to believe in any science, or anything outside their own personal experience.

Personally, I believe the Earth is a sphere. I've been to Australia, Europe, Africa, Asia and North America. The time the flights took and the routes the in-flight maps showed make sense for a spherical earth. So did the scenes visible out the windows, and the day/night cycle. The mere existence of time zones and seasons strongly suggests the Earth is a rotating sphere tilted slightly off vertical. But, it could be that I'm living in a Truman Show world, where everything is a lie designed to make me believe something that isn't true. I haven't personally done all the math, all the experiments, etc. to prove the Earth is a sphere. And, if this were a Truman Show world, the producers of the show could mess with my experiments anyhow.

For someone who doesn't want to believe, there's really nothing you can do to make them believe. The world really relies on trust and believing Occam's Razor.

[-] jlou@mastodon.social 1 points 15 minutes ago

If we assume that god, by definition, must be omniscient, there is actually a way to disprove the possibility with the following paradox:

This sentence is not known to be true by any omniscient being.

There are also more traditional arguments like the problem of evil

@science_memes

[-] psycho_driver@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 58 minutes ago)

How did the matter that constitutes the universe come into being? What was the single point that signifies the beginning of time? What set time in motion? Will time continue after the death of the universe?

None of it is worth trying to wrap our tiny little monkey brains around as far as I'm concerned. Go have a pint and listen to music that makes you happy.

[-] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 5 points 41 minutes ago

But the half life of polonium 210 is just 138 days. other is a few days. radium 226 is 1602 years. Why couldn't the earth have started with a lot of radium 226? Checkmate round earthers.

[-] madcaesar@lemmy.world 1 points 17 minutes ago

WERE YOU THERE TO SEE IT???? - The next moronic rebuttal

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 20 minutes ago

"God made the world with lead in it"

[-] TriflingToad@lemmy.world 1 points 21 minutes ago

is this even a real conversation? its just circles and rectangles

[-] InverseParallax@lemmy.world 49 points 3 hours ago

Yeah, this is broken because all lead did not have to come from polonium, that's how half-lives work.

It's still 100% bullshit in every way, someone just needs to have chatgpt4 sort out the current mass fraction to explain why, I'm way too lazy to argue against insanity.

[-] tburkhol@lemmy.world 2 points 40 minutes ago

https://wwwrcamnl.wr.usgs.gov/isoig/period/pb_iig.html

Lead-204 is the only isotope that doesn't derive from radioactive decay, and it represents only 1.4% of the lead on earth.

[-] iAvicenna@lemmy.world 28 points 3 hours ago

I assume someone saying this is a creationist and can just say god created Earth already with the lead in it. Therefore it is a pointless discussion.

[-] Ultraviolet@lemmy.world 19 points 2 hours ago

Which raises the question of why he would create a planet with the illusion of age and send you to hell for falling for his own trick.

[-] NostraDavid@programming.dev 1 points 1 hour ago

"for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God" - Exodus 20:5

Says it all, really. This whole character trait is that he's a jealous little asshole. He's like Dolores Umbridge.

I'm aware Christians may make counter-claims, but I've read the old testament, and all he does is to come off as an absolute asshole - you either worship me, or else!

I wasn't too surprised (but it made sense) that he (Elohim) originally came from the Canaanitic pantheon. How else can you be the only god, yet people shouldn't worship other gods? He's not, that's how.

/rant

[-] redhorsejacket@lemmy.world 1 points 3 minutes ago

Not that it really matters, but trying to learn about (Christian) God by reading the Old Testament is like trying to perform maintenance on your 2024 vehicle using a manual from the 2000 version of that car.. Like, yeah, that was relevant once, and there's some overlap, but the situation has evolved since then. It's called the Old Testament because it is based on something outdated (again, from a generically Christian perspective). The Old Covenant (which is what the Old Testament is testifying to) was between God and the Jews, and was based around compliance with the law. That's why the OT is so full of rules and punishments.

Then, Jesus arrives on the scene and changed the game. His birth, betrayal, and death, represent a new contract between God and humanity (not just the Jews) wherein mankind is saved by God's grace alone. In fact, God has done a 180 on the whole obedience to the law thing. Turns out, God loves sinners, and prostitutes, and tax collectors, and prodigal sons, and all sorts of ne'er-do-wells that the God of the Old Testament would have reviled. From the death of Jesus forward (and maybe retroactively too, I don't know dogma all that well), the only thing necessary for your salvation is God's grace, and that is given to all, as long as you accept God into your heart or something like that. Basically, God is Darth Vader, and he has altered the deal, pray he does not alter it further.

Of course, as with anything A) religious and B) 2000+ years old, there's a lot of disagreement on like every aspect of the above. But, I think I've got the gist of it correct from a generic, if Catholicism influenced, perspective. It's been a long time since I had to sit through a theology lecture.

With all that being said though, I imagine that the reason the OT has stuck around in Christianity is that it's characterization of God as vindictive and capricious and obsessed with toeing the line is a very useful tool for keeping the plebs compliant. They get to have their cake and eat it too, as it were. "God loves you unconditionally sweetie, remember that, but also if you have sex before marriage you are DAMNED to HELL for ETERNITY!"

[-] Zink@programming.dev 2 points 1 hour ago

And use his omnipotent power to hide from you while watching your life play out in exactly the way his omniscience let him know it would before he even created the earth or you.

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[-] Ashelyn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 2 hours ago

I always found it funny how they'll sometimes try to justify their claims scientifically to give it an air of legitimacy. If god created the stars close to one another and expanded them to fill the sky over a single day, the skies would be dark for billions of years. A YEC could easily say "oh well god put the light there to make the stars look like they've been in the sky for a long time" but very often they just don't have an answer because they didn't think of one. Unfortunately, there's almost that will stop them from doubling down on their beliefs and just becoming more prepared for the next person they talk to

[-] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 hours ago

The debate between Bill Nye and a creationist is so rage inducing. It's a terrible premise and the fact that Bill even agreed to it gave the creationist credit.

[-] psycho_driver@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

Oh yeah, well were you there 4.5 billion years ago to see this so-called uranium 238?!?

Check mate, science!

[-] BallsandBayonets@lemmings.world 51 points 4 hours ago

When I was being raised as a young earth creationist, the earth was supposedly 12,000-20,000 years old. Then it was 10,000 years old. Then only 6,000. After I outgrew that nonsense, I joked that in a few decades YECs would say that their god created the earth in 1980, and anyone older than 40 are agents of the devil sent to test your faith.

[-] gnutrino@programming.dev 15 points 2 hours ago

Of course, the universe was actually created in 1970 and anyone claiming to be older than 54 is an agent of Microsoft sent to test your faith in Unix.

[-] leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 5 points 2 hours ago

Earth will be created in 2036. This is just a rehearsal.

[-] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 2 points 7 minutes ago

The Earth was created on January 1st, 1970 and will end on January 19th, 2038.

[-] msage@programming.dev 2 points 28 minutes ago

I remember a time when all of this happens again

[-] GraniteM@lemmy.world 1 points 45 minutes ago

We're doing the extra-silly speedthrough right now. Next time will be much more comprehensible.

[-] psycho_driver@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

"After extensive beta testing we have decided to shelve this project. It just wasn't working."

[-] Soleos@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

All this has happened before, and all this will happen again.

[-] Malfeasant@lemm.ee 3 points 2 hours ago

Last Thursday.

[-] match@pawb.social 2 points 1 hour ago

God created your with your memories as-is this morning when you woke up

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[-] RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 hours ago

The correct answer would have been: "Why should I? You're an idiot."

[-] MicrowavedTea@infosec.pub 99 points 5 hours ago

Pretty sure the point of creationism is that everything was put on the earth when it was created, including fossils etc. You can't argue this with logic. My favorite spin off of this is Last Thursdayism where the earth was created last Thursday (regardless of what day it's now) which basically uses the same argument.

[-] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 hour ago

"It Is Useless To Attempt To Reason A Man Out Of A Thing He Was Never Reasoned Into." - Jonathan Swift

[-] GrammarPolice@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

It's an ad hoc argument. You can't argue against any ad hoc arguments with logic

[-] mindaika@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 3 hours ago

“God did it to trick you” is pretty hard to disprove

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[-] frezik@midwest.social 23 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

I'm not even sure how you get to 4000 years old from biblical literalisim.

Edit: going strictly by the biblical account, Adam lived to 930 years, and Noah 950. IIRC, their lives did not overlap. Jesus lived 2000 years ago. A whole bunch of stuff happens in between Noah and Jesus. So even if you're working strictly from the bible, how the hell do you get 4000 years?

[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 20 points 3 hours ago

So even if you’re working strictly from the bible, how the hell do you get 4000 years?

You can't. The "Young Earth" people are morons.

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[-] tacosanonymous@lemm.ee 5 points 2 hours ago

I had a dude come up to me at the reference desk and tell me that the earth can’t be billions (he said trillions, lol) of years old because erosion from the Mississippi River would make it wider and deeper than it is. I pulled up some info including the idea that the Mississippi was something that came about more recently because of plate shifting, etc and he just said, "Nah."

[-] Hope@lemmy.world 185 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Not to argue for creationism, but this argument sucks. Lead can be produced by supernova, not just through decay of heavier elements. But even that's besides the point, since if you believe some entity created the universe, surely said entity could have created whatever ratio of lead to uranium they wanted. It's not a falsifiable claim, there's really no disproving it, unfortunately.

(Not so fun fact: the environmental impact of leaded gasoline was discovered by trying to estimate the age of the earth using the radio of lead to uranium in uranium deposits, but the pollution from leaded gasoline was throwing the measurements off.)

[-] TaTTe@lemmy.world 7 points 2 hours ago

Also I'm amazed by how people don't seem to understand what half-life is. It's not the time it takes for an atom to decay. It's the time it takes for half of the atoms to decay, meaning there will be some U-238 that decay into Ra-226 in just a couple of seconds.

So even if the Earth was created 4000 years ago with uranium but not lead (for some weird reason), some of that lead would have decayed into lead by now.

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