nwabekeyi:
such scientist should also not use a cell phone, that's living a life of denial

LOL. The kind of science that gave us cell phone is different from the kind of science that gave us the cell-to-cellphone manufacturer evolution story. The former is called experimental/operational science, while the latter is called historical/origins science. The former involves repeatable experiments, while the latter involves experiments that are not repeatable.

LordReed:


What is their evidence?

Creation scientists and evolutionist scientists observe the same things, but they all interpret it as evidence for what they believe is true: Creation, for the Creation scientist, and Evolution, for the evolutionist scientist.

That should tell you something. Worldview! Ones worldview definitely affects how one interprets what one observes. Evolutionists have a worldview of Naturalism.

LordReed:


When Genesis was written, neither the Gregorian calendar that we use today nor the week days as we call them were invented or known to the author. The first day written in Genesis cannot be ascertained to be any of the week days as we know it so how can anybody claim to know which is the seventh day?

LOL. GOD created Adam on the 6th day, and surely GOD told him that the next day was the seventh day. Adam kept the seventh day Sabbath. And from Adam until now, the children of God have always kept the Sabbath. And so the only way the Sabbath would be lost is if the whole Sabbath keepers in the world slept all at once for a whole day and woke up, without knowing they have missed a whole day.

Also, counting of days in sevens began at creation. However, the Roman appellation on the days and the Gregorian calendar are relatively modern. Change to calendar did not affect the counting of days. Tomorrow is the seventh day, whether you call it 13 Oct. or 21 Jul.

nwabekeyi:
the origin of man as explained in science doesn't corelate with that of the bible, if you think it does. explain how Adam was created 6000+ years ago according to the bible while science thinks humans graced the earth hundreds of thousands years ago?

The word "naturalism" should replace science in this post of yours. There are Christians who are scientists too and who do not believe in billions of years.

LordReed:


Any Christian that says he knows what day is the supposedly day of rest is lying.

I am not arguing with you either, I am telling you the implications of your assertion. If "And the evening and the morning were the first day", does not mean a literary day then the author of Genesis was a dunce, its very simple.

How is the Christian lying who says that he knows the day of rest?

nwabekeyi:
the bible said the sun was created after the earth.

the bible said the sun revolves round the earth, how do we reconcile that?

Where did the Bible say that the sun revolves round the earth?

OP Visit creation.com

Answers to these questions and many more about the flood and Noah's ark, including how it could have accommodated the animals, are there. Use the search engine on the site to find plenty of articles about the flood and Noah's ark.

Akdegreat:


It's clear the purpose of the letter is neither to console nor commiserate but to chide and criticize her belief and decision.

That is why I agree that he's doing a good job on educating the whole world on how adopting an atheist worldview can make one be very humane, as he is being with his OP and posts.

Martinez19:
My letter is to Leah Sharibu and it's highlighting how and why she should dump religion and set herself free but it seems you can't comprehend. Didn't you see where I mentioned the government? Anyways, I don't have your time.

Yes. I get it. She is the one to "set herself free", prolly because she put herself into that predicament by being a Christian. To you, the only problem here is that she is practising religion. There is not even the consideration of the possibility that the murderous BH terrorists who could violate her human rights in the first place, may kill her after all even though she does whatever they require.

NO! The only problem here is clearly religion. Not a dysfunctional security apparatus, not even terrorism.

Is it not clear to all?

Martinez19:
Abegi go siddon. Am I not saying the truth? Even if something is tragic, does that mean that one can't learn or use it to illustrate valid points? Intellectuals are always seeking facts and educating while ratarded weaklings are always flowing with the tide of their emotions and feelings every when it's against reasoning, learn and brilliant illustrations.

Keep educating the whole world on how inhuman the atheist worldview is, okay?

It is disgusting, to say the least, that you have chosen to joke with the case of Leah Sharibu - a very sensitive case that touches sensitive issues such as terrorism, abuse of human rights, rape, violence, oppression and dehumanization - just to sell the senseless worldview of yours which is atheism.

Tomorrow we may see you claiming to be a humanist, but this is you mocking a little girl for the predicament she has found herself in. Are you being humane? We understand that atheism affects the way one thinks, but do you have to display callousness openly?

In this nonsense which you posted, where did you condemn the BH terrorists? Where did you condemn the government for not doing enough to secure the freedom of this girl? Does she not have the right to practise her Christian faith without oppression?

I get it. If you had a magic wand in your hand, you would have waved Christianity out of existence. But be sure you're not losing it yet while you're at it.

source: http://www.fulcrum7.com/apologetics/2016/12/1/is-christianity-anti-science

Eventually Galileo’s geocentric opponents denounced him to the Inquisition, Rome’s infamous apparatus for suppressing heresy. At that time, the Catholic Church had no official doctrine on heliocentrism vs. geocentrism, and noting that fact would have been the most sensible way to dismiss the charges against Galileo. Instead, to the Roman Catholic Church’s lasting discredit, it declared heliocentrism to be a falsehood, and, in 1616, the inquisition ordered Galileo to stop teaching heliocentrism. Although Pope Paul V and Cardinal Bellermine publicly supported the Inquisition, they quietly protected Galileo from any real consequences of its ruling.
Sixteen years later, in 1632, Galileo returned to the topic of heliocentrism and published a popular tract called “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.” The “Dialogue” was written in the form of a series of conversations between a heliocentrist, Salviati, an impartial but clever observer, Sagredo, and an Aristotelian, Simplicio, who defended geocentrism and was, as his named implied, a simpleton. Galileo managed to get the book approved by a board of censors in Florence rather than by the stricter censors in Rome. There was now a new pope, Urban VIII, and unfortunately Galileo made the impolitic mistake of putting one of this new pope’s favorite arguments—that God could have made the universe any way he wanted to and still made it appear as it does—in the mouth of Simplicio, the simpleton who had been ridiculed throughout the piece.
The pope reacted swiftly; he convened a special committee to consider the matter, and that committee denounced Galileo to the inquisition. This time Galileo didn’t have many friends in Rome. He was not tortured, but was shown the implements of torture, the unspoken implication being that they would be used if needed. In 1633, Galileo was convicted and ordered to “abjure, curse, and detest” heliocentrism, was sentenced to imprisonment, and was forbidden to publish anything further. His sentence of imprisonment was commuted to house arrest, and he lived the rest of his life at his villa in the hills above Florence.
Is there any real conflict between Bible Christianity and heliocentrism? Johannes Kepler, a very devout Lutheran, did not think so. Kepler (1571-1630) was a contemporary of Galileo, and even corresponded with him regarding heliocentrism. Kepler defended heliocentrism on both scientific and theological grounds. Living in Protestant Germany, Kepler was beyond the clutches of the Inquisition, but no Lutheran authorities molested him, either, because Bible Christianity does not conflict with the idea that the planets orbit the sun.
The real reason Galileo was persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church is that Catholic theology is a blend of Bible doctrine and the teachings of the ancient Greek philosophers. This amalgamation of Greek philosophy with Bible teaching is the pride and joy of Catholic theologians. The Greeks philosophized about the natural world, but seldom got out in it and conducted experiments. Hence, the heavily Greek-influenced Roman Catholic theologians were happy with “natural philosophy”—what science was called up until the late 19th Century—but did not seem to want observational science to upset their Greek-devised philosophical systems. And upsetting their systems is exactly what Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and the other heliocentric scientists were doing. So, the real reason for the persecution of Galileo was not Christianity—at least not Bible Christianity—but the Roman Church’s Greek-influenced theology.
This is also, I would argue, why science did not catch on in the Christian West earlier than it did. It is instructive to note that the great medieval scholar Roger Bacon (1214-1292), based upon his study of all the available writings on optics, argued that experimentation was just as important to science as logical proofs. Yet the idea that science should systematically use experimentation did not catch on in the 13th Century, nor at any time until after the Protestant Reformation. The Reformation took place in the early 16th Century, and by the mid-17th Century, after a century of Protestant culture diffusing throughout the West, we see the beginnings of modern experimental science.
Darwinism
Experimental science is excellent for studying present, ongoing, or repeating natural phenomena. The Christian worldview that God created the world to operate by fixed, rational laws gives the scientist the confidence that, given enough careful study, experimentation, observation, and logical reasoning based upon observed facts, those laws can be understood.
But naturalistic theories of origins are not based upon experimental science. Quite the opposite. Otherwise intelligent people cling to naturalistic theories of origins for philosophical reasons, despite the findings of experimental science. For example, experimental science has shown that life cannot come from non-life.
Francesco Redi (1626-1697), called the father of experimental biology, was the first to use experimental science to refute the commonly held belief in spontaneous generation. (You can probably guess where that belief came from. That’s right, the ancient Greeks. Spontaneous generation is also known as Aristotelian abiogenesis.) Redi is best known for his series of experiments, published in 1668, which are regarded as a milestone in the history of science. Then, the prevailing wisdom was that maggots arose spontaneously from rotting meat.
Redi took six jars and divided them into two groups of three. In the first jar of each group, he put an unknown object; in the second, a dead fish; in the last, a raw chunk of veal. Redi covered the tops of the first group of jars with fine gauze permeable only to air. He left the other group of jars uncovered. In a few days, maggots appeared in the open jars on which flies had been able to land, but not in the gauze-covered jars.
In a second experiment, meat was kept in three jars, one open, one covered with a fine gauze, and one stopped with a cork. Flies entered the uncovered jar, and maggots appeared in it. In the gauze-covered jar, maggots appeared on the gauze but did not survive. No maggots appeared in the cork stoppered jar.
These experiments appear very simple and obvious to us, but in the 17th Century they were revolutionary. Belief in spontaneous generation continued to hang around—in relation to ever smaller beasties—until Louis Pasteur finally put it to rest in 1862 with his own elegant experiment using broth in swan-necked flasks. “Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow of this simple experiment,” wrote Pasteur.
Today, much more is known of the complexity of even the smallest, “simplest” forms of life. Even a single-celled organism is many times more complex than any machine mankind has ever devised. Evolutionists are a million miles away from a credible theory as to how a single-celled organism could have come into existence without a parent organism. Abiogenesis—today’s fancy word for spontaneous generation—is the antithesis of the real experimental science that Christian civilization produced. Like geocentrism, abiogenesis is ancient Greek philosophy masquerading as science.
Conclusion
Modern science was born in the Christian West, and is a product of the Christian worldview. Its pioneers were almost all Christians, and frequently very devout believers. The persecution of science by the Roman Catholic Church was not a product of biblical religion but of pagan Greek philosophy being enforced by a Roman Church that had made Greek philosophy an integral part of its theology. Darwinism is not real science but, again, pagan philosophy masquerading as science.
Although science is now lavishly funded and supported throughout the developed world, cracks are starting to appear in its foundations:
The pressure on academic scientists to “publish or perish” has created a flood of unnecessary and worthless literature that does little or nothing to advance the frontiers of knowledge.
The availability of government and foundation funding encourages scientists to write grants even when they have nothing meaningful to research, and the money will be wasted. Worse still, the partisan corruption of the U.S. federal government steers grant money toward those who toe the party line on ideologically-driven issues such as anthropogenic global warming, the efficacy of same-sex parenting, females in combat, and a host of other politically sensitive issues.
Peer review, intended to protect against basic scientific errors, has often had the effect of enforcing ideological conformity and “group-think,” and preventing outsiders from making a startling or original contribution to a discipline. (Recall that a meteorologist, Alfred Wegener, pioneered plate tectonics, a seminal concept in geology.) And, as per below, peer review cannot prevent scientific fraud, plagiarism, manufacturing data, and other scientific misconduct.
Scientists have started to simply make up their data. Published scientific articles quite frequently must be retracted and de-published because of their authors’ lack of basic honesty and integrity. Per the New York Times , a scientific paper is retracted every day, on average, because of some form of scientific misconduct, usually plagiarism or fudging or inventing the data.

These problems will probably get worse in the post-Christian West, as honest and ethical behavior loses its necessary foundation in religious belief.

December 1, 2016 / David Read

One of the criticisms of Christianity urged by skeptics and atheists, from Voltaire to Richard Dawkins, is that Christianity is opposed to science. The narrative the skeptics promote is that Christian believers discourage investigation into the natural world because they want to lock people in ignorance and superstition so that they can be chained to revealed dogma. This could scarcely be farther from reality.
The undisputable fact is that modern science arose in the Christian West. What we think of as empirical science and the scientific method arose nowhere else—not in China, not in India, not in Japan, not in Africa, not in Arabia, and not even in the ancient Western civilizations of Greece and Rome. Only in Christian Europe did mankind develop the systematic study of nature, of physics, chemistry, biology, geology, meteorology, and all their many sub-disciplines. Only in the Christian West was science not only philosophized and speculated about, but routinely practiced, systematized, and treated as a calling and a profession.
Moreover, the founders of all the major scientific disciplines were Christians. Christians who were pioneers of science include Nicholas Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Leonardo da Vinci, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Antony Van Leeuwenhoek, Blaise Pascal, Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz, Robert Boyle, Michael Faraday, Nils Stensen, Georges Cuvier, Louis Agassiz, Charles Bell, Richard Owen, Louis Pasteur, Gregor Mendel, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Joseph Lister, Walter Reed, Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, and Werner Von Braun—just to name a few of the more notable Christian men of science.
That science was born in the Christian West, and that so many of its founders and brightest stars were Christians, is sufficient to negate the notion that there is a conflict between science and Christianity. But was it just an accident of geography that science was born and nurtured in the West? No, indeed! Science was born and nurtured in the West because the Christian worldview promotes systematic inquiry into the natural world in a way that other religions, philosophies, and cultures do not.
Features of the Christian Worldview that Promote Science
First, Christians believe that the world is real, not an illusion. Some systems of beliefs regard the natural world as an illusion. In Hinduism, the universe is regarded as maya, meaning not as it appears or seems to be. “To say that the universe is an illusion (māyā) is not to say that it is unreal,” writes Wendy Doniger, “it is to say, instead, that it is not what it seems to be, that it is something constantly being made. Māyā not only deceives people about the things they think they know; more basically, it limits their knowledge." Obviously, a belief system in which the universe is not what it appears to be, and thus essentially unknowable, will not give rise to a culture of careful, systematic study of the natural world.
Second, Christians believe that the material world is good, and tells us about God. In the biblical worldview, “God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.” Gen. 1:31. The Christian believes that “the heavens declare the glory of God, the skies show His handiwork” (Psalm 19:1) and that by carefully studying what God has created, we can learn more about God Himself (Rom. 1:19-20). For the Christian, studying nature is studying “God’s second book,” His revelation of Himself in what He has created. Some non-Christian belief systems, by contrast, regard matter and the material world as evil. Examples include Gnosticism, Manichaeism, and Zoroastrianism. Obviously, if you believe that the material world is evil you will be less inclined to carefully study it and more incline to dwell on more “elevated” topics, such as abstract philosophy.
Third, Christians do not believe the created things are possessed by countless spirits and little deities . Underlying most pagan spirituality is animism, the notion that each animal, tree, and rock has its own spirit or soul. Sometimes animals and other things that Christians believe are created by God are, in other religions, worshipped as gods, and likenesses of these creatures—idols—are worshipped. Obviously, scientific inquiry can scarcely be conceived of in a culture in which the sun, the moon, the trees, and the grass do not follow fixed physical and chemical laws, but are inhabited by spirits with their own volition. Every rock, river, or glacier could have a mind of its own, foreclosing any attempt at science. Likewise, if the crocodile or the ibis is inhabited by a divine presence and deserving of worship rather than close study, no scientific culture could ever get off the ground. The Christian also believes that there is Creator and created; God is separate from his creation, not part of it, as some Eastern philosophies like pantheism and panentheism teach. This gives the Christian the freedom to experiment on created things knowing that he is not thereby tampering with his own god.
Fourth, Christians believe in a God of order who created the world to operate by intelligible laws . Here, Christian culture has the decisive advantage over primitive animism and other pagan spirituality in encouraging scientific enquiry. Christians read in Job 38:33 that the heavens operate according to laws, which is a tremendous assurance for the astronomer who is trying to discern those laws. Johannes Kepler, who studied and wrote on the laws of planetary motion, was motivated by the strong conviction that God had created the universe according to a plan, to operate pursuant to laws that are intelligible through observation and reason. The mysteries of God’s creation are there to be solved by those with the time, patience and resources to solve them: “The glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the honor of kings is to search it out.” Proverbs 25:2.
Fifth, Christians believe in a loving God whose attributes and laws are fixed and unchanging . “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” 1 John 4:8. “I am the Lord; I change not.” Mal. 3:6; see, also, Num. 23:19; Heb. 13:8; James 1:17; Psalm 119:89. If God has created the world and its creatures to operate according to laws, those laws are permanent and unchanging. Hence, scientists having once learned how something works, need not fear that God will change the naturals laws, forcing scientists to start all over again. By contrast, the god of Islam is aloof, impersonal, arbitrary, and capricious, doing as he pleases and uncommitted to his promises. That kind of God does not provide the consistency and certainty necessary to form a foundation for the scientific enterprise, which is probably why Islam seldom took science beyond where it had been taken by the Greek, Latin, Persian and Christian peoples the Muslims conquered. While the Muslims preserved some of the learning of the ancient Greek philosophers, and made advances in mathematics—algebra is an Arabic word—and astronomy, Muslim civilization stagnated in the 11th Century where some say it remains to this day.
Whence the myth of conflict between Christianity and science?
Given the foregoing, whence comes the myth that Christianity and science are at war? The originators of the myth seem to have been two 19th Century writers, J. William Draper and Andrew Dickson White.
Draper, an English-American physician and chemist, seems to have become bitter over the death of his son, and the misbehavior of his Catholic-convert sister in relation thereto. His screed, “History of the Conflict between Religion and Science” (1874) is sympathetic to Protestants and Muslims and directs most of its bile at the Roman Catholic Church. But Draper ends by arguing that Catholics and Protestants were "in accord on one point: to tolerate no science except such as they considered agreeable to the Scriptures." Draper’s book was re-printed 50 times, and translated into ten languages.
White, Cornell University’s founding president, boasted that Cornell would be "an asylum for Science—where truth shall be sought for truth's sake, not stretched or cut exactly to fit Revealed Religion." He was criticized by Christian academics for the arrogance on display in that statement, and for Cornell’s accepting government grants that the denominational universities could not get. White ginned this minor controversy up into a two-volume tome called, “A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom” (1896) which ended with Cornell and White being the latest of the martyrs to Christianity’s war against science.
But the myth of the conflict between science and Christianity always boils down to two main topics: 1) the Galileo affair, and 2) Darwinism.
The Galileo Affair
Born in Pisa, Italy, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was a scientific jack-of-all-trades, a “polymath” who worked in astronomy, physics, engineering, philosophy, and mathematics, and played an important role in the scientific revolution of the 17th Century. He was devoted to induction—actually observing the heavens through a telescope—and his observations of the motions of the planets convinced him that Nicholas Copernicus had been correct that the planets, including the earth, orbit around the sun.
Heliocentrism was controversial in the early 17th Century, because it contradicted the ancient Greek philosophers Aristotle (384-322 BC) and Ptolemy (AD 100-170), as well as a hyper-literal reading of certain Bible verses such as Eccl. 1:5 (“The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hurries to the place where it rises.”) and Psalm 93:1 (“He has established the world, and it shall never be moved”).

Dalam0n:
.

LOL. How are they impossible? Because you've not seen them occur? Let me give you a hint of what a true impossibilty is: a square circle or a married bachelor.

If you're talking about Judges 5:20 then, I suggest you go back to vs.1 of that chapter and see that the whole thing is poetry. It says "Then sang Deborah and Barak the son of Abinoam on that day, saying..." Deborah used figures of speech in her song.

Dr. Robert Carter, a scientist, says that if you mix all the gene variants for skin, hair and eye colour in one person, they would have middle-brown skin and hair, and brown eyes. See that here https://creation.com/skin-colour-surprises

LOL. FWIW, the original book in which Mark wrote could have been burnt, stolen, destroyed or even degraded. Is it hard for your brain to imagine that a book written about 2000 years ago may not survive till now?

Dalam0n:
.

On what objective grounds do you call these things mythical? Just because you have not seen them occur? Do you realise that there is a concept in the Bible called prophecy, and that things like stars may symbolize other things? And where does the Bible say that stars fought in the sky alongside humans?

LOL. Whether their skin was white or black or blue, does it negate their historicity? This is just like asking evolutionists the color of the first goat that evolved. Meaningless. Besides, asking someone a question is not a proof of a claim you made.

I never expected you to understand the explanation I gave in respect to human race. However, more directly to your question: Adam and Eve must have been middle brown. See https://creation.com/skin-colour-surprises for a scientific look at it.

You're yet to tell me what the original gospel written by Mark has to do with this argument.

Dalam0n:
The bible is a book of mythology,

This is a claim. Why not prove it?

I said let's begin from the beginning. Adam and Eve are mythical figures.

This is another claim. Prove it, oga. I can as well say "Adam and Eve were historical figures".

If you disagree then tell me their race and the language they spoke.

There is only one race: the human race. Adam and Eve must have contained enough potential in their gene pools for the variations which have led to the (inconsequential) differences in physical characteristics of individuals in the human race today such as skin thickness and color, iris color, hair texture, etc.

Where is the original book of Mark and which of the various English translations was translated from it?

How does this question help your unfounded claim that the Bible is all mythology and folklore?

Dalam0n:
.

*I have removed your own post because I cannot make long posts now.*

Remember that you came claiming emphatically that the Bible is all mythology and folklore. When I asked you to prove your claim, you started asking me to prove Adam was historical? Why not go ahead and prove your assertion?

The picture you posted had different Bible versions in it. Why have you narrowed down the argument to the book of Mark now? Have you realized how foolish it is to claim that "only a lie has different versions" in the first place, not to talk of in relation to Bible versions?

How does Mark's not being an eyewitness help your argument that the Bible is all myth and folklore? Mind you, Peter most probably dictated the gospel to Mark.

Why are you asking me for the original version of mark? That there are many translations of Mark(from other languages to English) does not mean that there was not an original gospel of Mark, written by Mark.

Dalam0n:
People need to stay away from the Bible completely. It's only a book of iron age mythology and folklore.

Prove that the Bible is what you said, and not a Book that documents true history.

Moreover, the person who wrote that thing on the picture you posted in relation to the Bible is not intelligent. First off, there may be many versions of an incidence like the Holocaust, but that does not mean that the Holocause is a lie. Second, the many versions of the Bible today are only translations of older text, which may be traced to an original. Granted, some were translated from copies of the original which may have been corrupted, but the versions of the Bible are not "versions" in the sense of many people retelling an event to which all of them claim to be eyewitnesses.

Niflheim:
Somebody is asking for pics of EVOLUTION or it does not exist?



This is imbecilic to say the least!!! The words "christian brain" and the words "true vacuum" should be interchangeable by now!!!..............................................................https://www.sciencealert.com/watch-this-amazing-video-shows-evolution-happening-in-just-days

I am almost sure that if this E. coli in question developed resistance to the drug through mutation, and not through any of the several other means, then it was a loss of information mutation, and not that of gain of new information(GONI) i.e. information that previously did not exist in the genome. And if so, then the E. coli did not evolve into any new species. It simply lost some genetic information, which helped it become a drug-resistant E. coli.

Note that only mutation involving gain, and not loss, of genetic information can hypothetically drive the microbes-to-man evolution.

CoolUsername:


I really think your problem here is with the entire scientific method because modification of your hypothesis is a routine step in all fields of scientific research. The fact is that no form of the theory of creationism that tries to exclude evolution stands up to scrutiny. It's as simple as that.

If the scrutiny you're talking about is the criticism of evolutionist scientists, then creationists are not bothered, because same can be said of the theory of evolution: no form of the theory of evolution that tries to exclude creationism stands up to scrutiny, with creation scientists. And we know that there are thoroughly trained and qualified scientists on the side of creationism. Some of them are at creation.com

CoolUsername:


I can agree with you that Wikipedia is biased against creationism in terms of misrepresenting creationist arguments, given their track record which I'm all too familiar with. What I disagree with is you treating evolution vs creationism like it is a controversial issue in the science community.

Evolution by natural selection is a very strong theory with a great deal of biological, geological, and even mathematical evidence (through mathematical modelling). Creationism - at least the type that tries to discredit evolution - would probably get you laughed out of the room and with good reason.

There is no evidence and no good argument out there that discredits evolution theory. Creationism can be paired up with evolution just fine, not all scientists are atheists. You can believe in God without trying to deny evolution.

If your argument is that the majority of scientists subscribe to the theory of evolution, and that they mock those who don't believe in evolution with them, then perhaps no one may dispute that. But evolution is no more supported by "evidence" than is creationism. In fact, scientists on both sides of the issue observe the same data, but interpret the data differently to support their preconceived worldviews. Put concisely, both evolutionists and creationists constantly see "evidence" for their theories in the same things.

You can argue that no evidence can discredit evolution: that may be because evolutionists are ready to adjust and readjust their theories so that their model will accommodate any observed phenomenon.

CoolUsername:
Although creationism is not the hill you want to die on, this post is right to point out Wikipedia's left wing bias.

Take any politically divisive topic and Wikipedia will overwhelmingly favour the leftist position by omitting damning information and posting dubious points about the right. They also push politically correct, feminist rhetoric as much as possible.

Take for a example, the Wikipedia entry for Sarah Jeong, an Asian American journalist who was recently employed by the New York Times. This woman has tweets calling white people 'goblins' and stuff like 'cancel the white race'. When people found out about this the NYT didn't fire her but rather defended her. Anyway, when people tried to edit her wikipedia entry to make mention of the tweets, wikipedia locked the article from editing. Why? To protect a leftist journalist.

Furthermore, I've been on top nerd culture for a while now so I'm quite familiar with the term 'GamerGate', I want everyone who is skeptical of what I'm saying to check out the Wikipedia entry on GamerGate and compare it to that of KnowYourMeme and Encyclopedia Dramatica just to get a view of how they subtly twist the narrative.

That said, when it comes to scientific topics Wikipedia is relatively unbiased, this doesn't mean it is a very factual source, though. It may be okay for getting general information but it's better to seek other sources for deeper study.

When it comes to some controversial topics like evolution vs creationism, I don't agree that Wikipedia is unbiased. The opposite is in fact the case: they are totally biased against creationism. How can anyone called them unbiased when they constantly misrepresent, shun, suppress, omit and dismiss without any convincing reasons the arguments of creationists against those of evolution? On the other hand, they promote and force down the throats of everyone the largely unverified stories of evolution. This may make more meaning to you if you realise that the whole thing is a battle of worldviews: Naturalism (the unfounded and unverifiable idea that everything arose out of natural processes without divine intervention) versus Creationism.

The No True Scotsman fallacy which a Wikipedia editor committed, as pointed out by the OP, speaks volumes on the issue of whether Wikipedia is biased or not.

by Paul Price

Since its inception in 2001, Wikipedia has been a controversial website, plagued with problems, the greatest of which is the serious concern of biased and inaccurate content. This is no small problem for the internet at large, since Wikipedia has become a go-to source on nearly everything, appearing in a very high percentage of Google searches as one of the top results.

More recently, Google was embarrassed by a gaffe in which their search results pulled data automatically from Wikipedia which labeled the California GOP (Republican party) as Nazis—attributed by Google and Wikipedia to ‘vandalism’. This only goes to show the deep extent to which Google, the world’s most-used search engine by far, is utilizing the information contained on Wikipedia pages, and the dangers this presents.

Wikipedia is rife with overt falsehoods and bias against biblical creationists. It is serving to reinforce this bias across the world as Wikipedia continues to see broader and broader application.

Neutral Point of View?

Wikipedia is governed by various guidelines which are supposed to regulate how articles are administered on the site. According to their guideline called ‘Neutral point of view’,

All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic.

Already you can see a potential here for bias since we have subjective terms such as “significant” and “reliable” being used. Who gets to determine what constitutes significant or reliable? Well, the editors themselves, as it turns out—that means you, me, and literally anyone with a computer who knows how to edit Wikipedia. But here’s the catch: anyone can also revert any changes made by another editor. This means ultimately that articles represent a ‘consensus’. This would be bad enough in itself, since we know that truth is not decided by majority vote, and ‘consensus science’ is anti-science. But it is worse than it seems on the surface, since most Wikipedia articles are not being watched or edited by a very large number of people. Here, the ‘consensus’ is really only the agreement of a relative few people who, by chance, happen to be the only ones monitoring a given page at a given time. This means that the less popular a page is, the more likely it is to contain errors and bias, or, in the words of wiki expert Alexander Halavais, “The high-traffic areas are going to be the cleanest.”

Even high-traffic areas, though, are not going to be free of bias if the topic is of a controversial or contentious nature. Since Wikipedia is essentially mob-rule applied to encyclopedia content, the prevailing view of the mob is going to determine the bias of the articles. It is naïve to expect people to police themselves when dealing with topics they are averse to, like biblical creation.

Who are ‘Wikipedians’?

When you consider who “the mob” is on Wikipedia, it is that subset of people who have access to the internet, know about Wikipedia and care enough about it to make changes on it—and additionally have the technical expertise to do so (since modifying Wikipedia is a bit like using programming language). Wow! Come to think of it, that is a pretty specialized group, isn’t it? And would we expect that particular group to fit into any categories? Probably largely younger people, for starters, and largely Westerners, since the internet is originally a product of the West and is still dominated largely by the West.

It turns out my predictions were right on the money. A 2010 study on Wikipedia editors shows that the greatest number of editors are in the USA (20%), followed by Germany (12%) and Russia (7%). The only non-Western country in the top 10 was India (3%), which of course also has a strong Western influence due to the history of British colonialism there. 59% were ages 17 to 40.

So if Wikipedia editors tend to be younger Westerners, what biases would we expect to find there? We know that younger people in the USA are tending more and more towards the abandonment of religion. This trend is even more severe in Europe, which is now being described as post-Christian. The trend among younger people in the USA is also towards the acceptance of Darwinism and rejection of biblical creation according to a Pew Research Center report (according to one reporter, “ … if you ask a younger American how humans arose, you’re likely to get an answer that has nothing to do with God”).

Bias, bias, bias!

This all adds up to a stark and sad reality: Wikipedia is very likely to be hopelessly, terribly unbalanced in articles dealing with God, religion and creation science. In digging through some relevant pages, I found some really cringe-worthy, egregious examples of this. In the Wikipedia guidelines section on ‘Fringe theories’, it says this:

“Pseudoscience usually relies on attacking mainstream scientific theories and methodology while lacking a critical discourse itself (as is common among Biblical creationists)” [emphasis mine]
They didn’t even attempt to hold back, claiming that creationism is pseudoscience. Creationists certainly do not lack a critical discourse; all the articles on this site, for example, undergo a peer review process. In addition, creationists publish in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Creation, and go to collective meetings such as the International Conference on Creationism, where ideas are debated and discussed, among many other avenues. Creationists even also publish in secular peer-reviewed journals as well!

Wikipedia openly and blatantly classifies biblical creationism as ‘pseudoscience’:

“Creation science is a pseudoscientific attempt to map the Bible into scientific facts. It is viewed by professional biologists as unscholarly, and even as a dishonest and misguided sham, with extremely harmful educational consequences.”
The level of bias and misrepresentation here is almost beyond words. It is sad that this is coming from what may be the internet’s most-used source of information, but this is the reality we must face in the 21st century. The wording here implies there is a total lack of any professional scientists who support and engage in creation science—a claim which is flat out wrong.

Ideology is a big motivator

According to Wikipedia’s policy on neutrality, “Articles must not take sides, but should explain the sides, fairly and without editorial bias. This applies to both what you say and how you say it.” However, according to a study from 2007, “ideology” was among the most commonly indicated motives for editing Wikipedia articles. There is obviously a major conflict of interest present if people are commonly making edits to Wikipedia for ideological reasons, which is exactly the opposite of Wikipedia’s stated policy of neutrality. Predictably, the result is that bias is rife within the articles on the site.

The proper response to this is twofold: first, Christians and biblical creationists should lobby whenever possible against the rampant bias at Wikipedia and make others aware of it. How else can we ever hope to see a positive change? Christians should engage themselves in the debate online by taking part in the editing of Wikipedia articles to remove clear instances of bias (but not to attempt to introduce pro-Christian biases of our own in the text).

For my part, I raised a fuss at Wikipedia over Jonathan Sarfati’s biographical page including a defamatory quote from Eugenie Scott calling Refuting Evolution 2 a “crude piece of propaganda”. To make a long story short, I wound up getting banned indefinitely on that account, and one of the Wikipedia editors had this to say (a clear admission of purposeful defamation and discrimination):

“There is zero chance that Wikipedia will ever treat pseudoscientists who believe that everything was created in 7 literal days 10,000 years ago the same way we treat the actual scientists -- astronomers, physicists, geologists, paleontologists, etc. -- who have solid evidence that the earth is much, much older.”
Of course, this comment betrays ignorance of the biblical account itself, since God created in 6, not 7 days. In addition, it commits the No True Scotsman fallacy in asserting that creation scientists are not ‘actual’ scientists.

Second, it should be clearly understood in general that Wikipedia is not a good source of information, especially on lesser-known topics and on any potentially controversial topics. That does not make it useless, however. For example, I have found Wikipedia to be a great source of other sources. Sometimes this can be a great shortcut to finding relevant pages, papers, books, etc. on a topic of interest.

It has been documented time and again that there is a battle going on in academia and in the media to attempt to silence all dissent against Darwinism. Because Wikipedia is so driven by consensus (rule of the majority a.k.a. mob rule), it suffers from all the problems that such systems of governance typically do, such as the ‘tyranny of the majority’, where the majority acts against the interests of minority groups.

The problems at Wikipedia are only symptomatic of a larger struggle that has been going on much longer than Wikipedia has been around. With God’s help, let us do our part to represent and defend the truth of the Bible and of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world, in every medium possible.


Source: https://creation.com/wikipedia

The Prayer of the Souls Under the Altar: TFC 3.2

"How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" Revelation 6:10. TFC 3.3
The advocates of the kindred popular doctrines of the immortality of the soul, and that the souls of the righteous go to heaven at death, believe and teach that the souls of martyrs are alive under an altar in heaven, and that they literally pray in the above words for vengeance on their persecutors. They do not seem to see that there is anything inconsistent in the idea that the souls of the martyrs in the presence of God, where there is fullness of joy, should be able to think only of their past tortures, and be entirely given up to anxiety for vengeance on their persecutors, who had hastened their arrival to their state of blessedness. Nor do they seem to realize that such prayers are not only unlike the spirit of Christ, who prayed in an hour of extreme anguish, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do;" but that they are unlike the spirit of the noble martyr Stephen, who cried with his dying breath, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." Luke 23:34; Acts 7:60. Nor do they explain how such a prayer can be offered literally while the Saviour stands before the ark of God's law as a great sacrifice, and the Spirit of God strives with sinful men to lead them to repentance. But let this case stand while we look at another. TFC 3.4
The parable of the rich man and Lazarus teaches, to the same class of people, that the righteous at death go to heaven, and the wicked at death go into the flames of hell. See Luke 16:19 - 31. It also shows them that the wicked in their torment are not only in plain sight of the righteous in their blessedness, but that the two places are within speaking distance of each other, and that the two parties converse together. Now let us put these two cases together. TFC 4.1
The souls under the altar had only to look from their state of blessedness to see their persecutors in the flames of hell, or dropping, one by one, into this fiery gulf. Could the martyrs, with this terrible sight before them, pray, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" Would they have been bidden to wait yet a little season? Would they not rather have been directed to look across the great gulf, and see many of their persecutors already in torment, and others every moment arriving? Who does not see that these two cases, when taken together, completely refute the doctrine so often drawn from each taken alone! TFC 4.2


Taken from "Thoughts for the Candid" by J.N. Andrews.

johnydon22:


To invoke Hawkins' lecture further still

"If space and imaginary time are indeed like the surface of the Earth, there wouldn't be any singularities in the imaginary time direction, at which the laws of physics would break down. And there wouldn't be any boundaries, to the imaginary time space-time, just as there aren't any boundaries to the surface of the Earth. This absence of boundaries means that the laws of physics would determine the state of the universe uniquely, in imaginary time. But if one knows the state of the universe in imaginary time, one can calculate the state of the universe in real time. One would still expect some sort of Big Bang singularity in real time. So real time would still have a beginning. But one wouldn't have to appeal to something outside the universe, to determine how the universe began. Instead, the way the universe started out at the Big Bang would be determined by the state of the universe in imaginary time. Thus, the universe would be a completely self-contained system. It would not be determined by anything outside the physical universe, that we observe. "

Can we further this implication then?/

It is really interesting that the excerpt you posted began with the word "if", and that Hawking refers to his "no boundary condition" as a hypothesis in the lecture.

I like that Hawking was very honest in calling this concept of his "imaginary time". However, I don't think the excerpt you posted supports the eternal cyclic universe theory which conflicts badly with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Instead, I think Hawking was trying so hard to circumvent the need for a Creator, which a singularity poses. I believe this is evident from the conclusion of the lecture in which he at least admits that real time would still require a singularity. You see, a singularity would mean a beginning of time, and barring any explanation, a Creator. To marry the inevitable beginning of the universe with his Creatorless worldview, he invokes imaginary time before real time. Just what was happening at that imaginary time, he did not tell us. I guess imaginary things were happening in the imaginary time in preparation for the coming into existence of the real time. All imaginary.

Anyway, according to William Lane Craig, "Hawking acknowledges that models which use imaginary time “are not realistic descriptions of the universe“, rather, they have only instrumental value. [William Lane Craig, Time and Eternity, pg. 218 (2001) referencing Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, The Nature of Space and Time, pgs. 3-4, 121; cf 53-55 (1996)] Hawking also admits that when you go back to the “real time in which we live”, “there will still appear to be singularities.” [William Lane Craig, Time and Eternity, pg. 218 (2001) referencing Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, pg. 139 (1996)]"
http://factsandfaith.com/does-imaginary-time-eliminate-the-need-for-a-creator/

If only the imaginary would be allowed to remain imaginary...

johnydon22:


Answer the question.

And second question: what implication of Hawkins' lecture negates an eternal oscillating cosmos?

Lol. The very title of Hawking's lecture should prove to you that he does not agree with the theory of oscillating cosmos/cyclic universes, because it requires time to not have a beginning.

But let's see. What do you think that Hawking means when he says in the lecture that your theory is in bad trouble when it conflicts with the Second Law of Thermodynamics? If the universe has been going through an eternal series of contractions and expansions – our Big Bang supposedly being the latest contraction in an eternal series, we should find ourselves in a universe that is completely disordered and dead, which is what the Second Law of Thermodynamics predicts should happen.

An article from New Scientist puts it this way:

“Such a universe would be uniformly lukewarm and featureless, and definitely lacking such complicated beings as stars, planets and physicists—nothing like the one we see around us.” Grossman, L., Death of the eternal cosmos, New Scientist 213(2847):6–7, 14 January 2012; from https://creation.com/universe-had-a-beginning

We do not find ourselves in such a universe, hence a cyclical universe cannot extend infinitely into the past.

johnydon22:


So what you mean is that supposing I have read the lecture I would have modified my conclusion to coincide with Stephen Hawkins'?

Oh! Forgive me. I forgot that everyone is entitled to believing whatever they want to believe.

johnydon22:


I have read a brief history of time..

What's the point you are making?

The lecture in that link I posted is not "A Brief History of Time", which is a 256-page book published in 1988. The lecture in the link I posted is titled "The Beginning of Time". And I don't think that you have read that article, or else you would not be making assertions like the one below which you made in the OP

johnydon22:


Therefore i hold the idea that the universe has always existed whether designed or not.

I found the lecture in the link below, given by Stephen Hawking, who was an atheist. I think you might want to check out what Hawking has to say on whether the universe has always existed.

http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html

For the other things he discussed in the lecture, I want you to note the amount of "would haves" and "ifs" and other like words in the lecture.

Johnydon22, I'd like to introduce you to creation.com

I'd like you to check out what they have to say on things like the eternal universe theory, and the theory of unending cycle of universes.