Kaymyth she/her Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 Can someone fix this downvote? Totally accidental. I fix! 1
Seonid he/him Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 Nice! I'm curious too, would you or Trizee say you believe in a young earth, like Haelbarde was asking? I do myself, and I think there's a number of very good explanations for why scientists may be misinterpreting a lot of data that seems to indicate an older earth and universe. jW As a Mormon, I don't. Of course, there are Mormons who do, but as a physicist, I've worked with the data firsthand, and I find it quite convincing. 2
Delightful Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 (edited) Nice! I'm curious too, would you or Trizee say you believe in a young earth, like Haelbarde was asking? I do myself, and I think there's a number of very good explanations for why scientists may be misinterpreting a lot of data that seems to indicate an older earth and universe. jW I think it's a complex issue. I was brought up with "Torahs account of Creation is literal, the world took 7 days to create and is 5700 years old, (This year is 5776) G-D put the dinosaur bones into the ground, and carbon dating is wrong anyways". So a completely fath based view. I'm wary of the "science is wrong" view because a) it sounds a heck of a lot like confirmation bias to me and B ) we trust science when it comes to medicine, but then we pick and choose whatever else suits us? That being said I recognise that science is imperfect and is always developing so who ever really knows anyway? Two other interesting points: 1. Possibly the description of one day/one night is not literal, and was much longer than how we count. 2. Secular historians mark the changeover between prehistoric times and ancient times with the invention of writing in around 3000BCE. if the world is 5776 years old this year, that puts Creation at 3760 BCE. So if we developed from monkeys, we became recognisably sentient at around the time religion says man was created. What do I personally believe? It doesn't matter, leaning towards science/old earth. But I don't think people are wrong to say young earth. As a teacher of mine says, religion isnt here to teach us how things happened, but rather to teach us why. So 7 days or 70 million years, the important question is what we do while we're here. Edited March 9, 2016 by Delightful 4
The Invested Beard Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 I think it's a complex issue. I was brought up with "Torahs account of Creation is literal, the world took 7 days to create and is 5700 years old, (This year is 5776) G-D put the dinosaur bones into the ground, and carbon dating is wrong anyways". So a completely fath based view. I'm wary of the "science is wrong" view because a) it sounds a heck of a lot like confirmation bias to me and B ) we trust science when it comes to medicine, but then we pick and choose whatever else suits us? That being said I recognise that science is imperfect and is always developing so who ever really knows anyway? Two other interesting points: 1. Possibly the description of one day/one night is not literal, and was much longer than how we count. 2. Secular historians mark the changeover between prehistoric times and ancient times with the invention of writing in around 3000BCE. if the world is 5776 years old this year, that puts Creation at 3760 BCE. So if we developed from monkeys, we became recognisably sentient at around the time religion says man was created. What do I personally believe? It doesn't matter, leaning towards science/old earth. But I don't think people are wrong to say young earth. As a teacher of mine says, religion isnt here to teach us how things happened, but rather to teach us why. So 7 days or 70 million years, the important question is what we do while we're here. Yeah I personally hold to an old earth interpretation, but I know that in the end the point of Genesis is not to tell us how long, but who created and why he created. 1
Jondesu he/him Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 I'm wary of the "science is wrong" view because a) it sounds a heck of a lot like confirmation bias to me and B ) we trust science when it comes to medicine, but then we pick and choose whatever else suits us? That being said I recognise that science is imperfect and is always developing so who ever really knows anyway? I don't trust medicinal science that much either, actually. :-P It hasn't helped me, plus I see too many examples of bad science and legislation getting in the way of progress. Vaccines are a key example. The concept is great and many or good, but here in the US you're not even allowed to bring a suit against a vaccine company, and the doctors can't label problems as being caused by vaccines usually because they get shut down at every turn. As you said, there could certainly be confirmation bias in many cases, but science is far from perfect in many areas, sometimes because of confirmation bias on the other side too. jW
Delightful Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 I don't trust medicinal science that much either, actually. :-P It hasn't helped me, plus I see too many examples of bad science and legislation getting in the way of progress. Vaccines are a key example. The concept is great and many or good, but here in the US you're not even allowed to bring a suit against a vaccine company, and the doctors can't label problems as being caused by vaccines usually because they get shut down at every turn. As you said, there could certainly be confirmation bias in many cases, but science is far from perfect in many areas, sometimes because of confirmation bias on the other side too. jW True. It's all complicated and I don't know that we can know for sure either way. I do know that both science and religion gives us wonderful things that greatly improve life, and both can go sour and lead to "holy wars" and nuclear weaponry. So.....yeah.
Voidus Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 I don't trust medicinal science that much either, actually. :-P It hasn't helped me, plus I see too many examples of bad science and legislation getting in the way of progress. Vaccines are a key example. The concept is great and many or good, but here in the US you're not even allowed to bring a suit against a vaccine company, and the doctors can't label problems as being caused by vaccines usually because they get shut down at every turn. As you said, there could certainly be confirmation bias in many cases, but science is far from perfect in many areas, sometimes because of confirmation bias on the other side too. jW Well to speak up for science that's not really a problem with science it's a problem with corporations and politics. All science does is give us answers and solutions, what we do with those solutions is on us. 2
Jondesu he/him Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 Well to speak up for science that's not really a problem with science it's a problem with corporations and politics. All science does is give us answers and solutions, what we do with those solutions is on us. Fair. I still don't blindly trust what scientists say for that reason. :-) jW
Voidus Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 Fair. I still don't blindly trust what scientists say for that reason. :-) jW Best thing about science, you never have to blindly trust what people say, that's why we have journals and the peer review process. 4
Delightful Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 Ok can I ask a question then? What's the deal with climate change? I've only heard details mentioned in context of heavy politics and therefore don't know what to believe. 1
Voidus Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 Ok can I ask a question then? What's the deal with climate change? I've only heard details mentioned in context of heavy politics and therefore don't know what to believe. I haven't read or heard of a single peer-reviewed paper in a good journal that disputes climate change being influenced by human activity. The most I've seen is the odd paper from an oil company suggesting that it hasn't been definitively proven yet. But I mostly read biology articles about boring things like advances in genetically modified wheat so I wouldn't claim to be well read on meteorological papers.
The Invested Beard Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 Climate change influenced by humans? Sure. Degree to which humans contribute opposed to natural climate change? Up for debate.
Orlion Blight he/him Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 Ok can I ask a question then? What's the deal with climate change? I've only heard details mentioned in context of heavy politics and therefore don't know what to believe. The scientific consensus (overwhelming) is that global warming does, in fact, occur. Human industry is also a big contributing factor. Climate change is another concept, though it is related that deals with changes in the environment.The various environmental effects (decreased bee population, "effects" of GMOs, etc) often get lumped into this debate, though this may be somewhat unwarranted. Environmental harm has been perpetrated on both sides (even Al Gore is responsible for some crazy stuff involving Monsato and their flagship product).
Seonid he/him Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 (edited) Ok can I ask a question then? What's the deal with climate change? I've only heard details mentioned in context of heavy politics and therefore don't know what to believe. Climate change is an interesting subject. Almost nobody credible disputes that it's happening. A few people - mostly outside the actual climate science community - dispute whether or not humans influence it. The big debate is "how much" and "what are the results going to be?" That last bit is the tricky part, because we don't have another planet to run experiments on. All we can do is build computer models, and there's way too much complexity in the weather systems to be sure our models are getting things exactly right. But we can make good, reasonable predictions. And sometimes even those get proven wrong because of mechanisms that we didn't fully understand yet. So the story of climate research is building a computer model, comparing ti to real-world data for a few years, noticing a discrepancy, crunching the math until we figure out where it is, putting into the model, running it again, and so on. Our models are getting much more accurate than they were. And the measurements of the atmosphere are clear - CO2 levels are increasing. Temperature is increasing. We have reasonable (but not perfect) models that indicate a correlation. We have firm science that gives us a mechanism for why increased CO2 could cause increased temperature. So it's certain that the temperature is increasing. It's almost certain (and extremely likely) that human activity is contributing to that increase, probably significantly. The end results of the temperature increase are far less certain, but we have computer models that we are constantly updating, devoted to the task of answering that question. Edited March 9, 2016 by Seonid
Claincy he/him Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 What do I personally believe? It doesn't matter, leaning towards science/old earth. But I don't think people are wrong to say young earth. As a teacher of mine says, religion isnt here to teach us how things happened, but rather to teach us why. So 7 days or 70 million years, the important question is what we do while we're here. Yeah I agree. I think it's perhaps more likely that way, but I don't think it really matters if it was a literal or illustrative description. (I'm Christian->Anglican)
Kobold King he/him Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 (I'm Christian->Anglican) Just got officially confirmed as an Anglican last Sunday myself!
Delightful Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 (edited) Ok. Global warming is happening. How do we know we've influenced it rather than it being a natural occurrence? Kobold, what does that mean? Edited March 9, 2016 by Delightful
Kobold King he/him Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 Kobold, what does that mean? It's the Anglican cultural descendant of the Jewish Bar/Bat Mitzvah, as I understand it. It's a short ceremony by which adults or near-adults officially "confirm" that they accept Jesus Christ as their savior and pledge to take responsibility for their own sins and spiritual walk. Unlike baptism, which the Anglican church conducts on infants, confirmation is supposed to represent a person deciding to become a Christian of their own free will and not simply because their parents and family expect it of them. Now, personally I'd already come to these decisions of my own prayers and meditations at sixteen, so I didn't feel the act of having the bishop officially confirm me into the faith was particularly spiritually edifying to me. But it was a nice ceremony and I got cake and a nifty metal necklace thing afterwards, so I'm happy with it.
Aonar he/him Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 Ok. Global warming is happening. How do we know we've influenced it rather than it being a natural occurrence? Kobold, what does that mean? How do we know? Well, technically, we're in an ice age right now. (Seonid already gave the serious answer, that we don't technically know, but have pretty good suspicions based on theories about carbon emissions and how they've aligned with meteorological measurements, but I'm going to have a bit of fun with this, if you don't mind. ) The Quaternary Ice Age is ongoing at the moment; the only reason we aren't all freezing to death is that we happen to be in an interglacial period, basically, a short (geologically speaking) warm spell amidst the ice age. Generally, these last between 10 and 15 thousand years. Based on what research has been done, this means the current interglacial period should be winding down within the next 1-3 thousand years. However, given current temperature and weather patterns, our best predictions are placing the next glaciation at around 50 thousand + years from now. (And assuming current theories are right, and our carbon emissions keep increasing, we may never leave the current interglacial period.) So yeah. If Canadians like me aren't all buried under a couple miles of ice in the next millennium or so, then there's a pretty good chance we've had a fair bit to do with global warming. (Of course, if we wait that long before doing something about global warming, then we'll have much bigger problems on our hands than some missing ice.) 3
Kobold King he/him Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 What kind of necklace? Do you have to wear it? It's a little dog-tag that has a cross on one side and the words "The TRUTH and the WAY and the LIFE" on the other. I don't have to wear it, but I probably will every now and then to church. 1
Delightful Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 Soo how do we know we're in an ice age? What's the alternative to an ice age if we're speaking over multiple thousands of years?
Voidus Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 Soo how do we know we're in an ice age? What's the alternative to an ice age if we're speaking over multiple thousands of years? Because we have substantial permanent polar ice sheets.
Delightful Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 (edited) So when we're not in an ice age we're in a .....water age? Edited March 9, 2016 by Delightful
Voidus Posted March 9, 2016 Posted March 9, 2016 So when we're not in an ice age we're in a .....water age? I don't think that's the technical name but yeah I believe so But again I'm much more confident talking about biological history rather than geology or climate science.
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