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Earth’s Water Is Older Than the Sun

blogs.discovermagazine.com

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Re: Earth’s Water Is Older Than the Sun

#71

Post by lotharbot »

scott_s wrote: post #64
eapen wrote: post #16

I came to say that this changes everything since I thought the light came first. Still seemed relevant. (not trolling) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_there_be_light In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.…

I downvoted you because religious discussions are classic internet flamewar topics. We'd like to avoid those.

"unless you have something genuinely new to say about them."

(From the guidelines.)

Re: Earth’s Water Is Older Than the Sun

#72

Post by _urga »

krapp wrote: post #63
_urga wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to disprove the Christian faith (faith in the historical person of Jesus Christ), then you need to make up your mind about the positive and negative historical sources concerning him, their closeness in time to him (historical distance), and the textual reliability of those sources. See Paul Barnett's "Jesus And The Logic Of History" for the historical method as applied to Jesus: http://www.amazon.com/Jes…

I'm not interested in proving it or disproving it, but rather just pointing out that Christianity keeps disproving itself, particularly when it comes to interpreting something like Genesis as anything but an ancient fable. Using science to try to validate a creation myth thousands of years removed from its intended cultural and political context seems kind of absurd - and a lot of Christians would agree with me anywa…

I think there's a difference between the scientific method (our study and understanding of observed uniformity) and the historical method (our study and understanding of events and their explanation, particularly how one event causes another).

Furthermore, there's a difference between historical study (did it happen?) and frequentism (how often has it happened?).

For example, if we are using words such as "didn't happen" then the best way to explain this would be in terms of the historical method and not in terms of frequentism (there is a fascinating essay on frequentism and how it kept people from accepting Bayes theorem for many years).

The other thing people often do in these kinds of discussions is to reduce all human knowledge (the sciences) to merely the scientific method, which is to confuse science with scientism.

I think it's useful and constructive to credit/discredit the Bible on its most central and crucial claim - the historicity of Jesus Christ - something which is much easier and concrete to deal with than trying to peer millions of years back in time through a particular kind of literary genre.

Re: Earth’s Water Is Older Than the Sun

#73

Post by scott_s »

lotharbot wrote: post #71
scott_s wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted you because religious discussions are classic internet flamewar topics. We'd like to avoid those.

"unless you have something genuinely new to say about them." (From the guidelines.)

I contend that there is nothing genuinely new regarding religion in this thread. Also, religious discussion on science story submissions are off-topic, and almost guaranteed to turn into flamewars.

Re: Earth’s Water Is Older Than the Sun

#74

Post by lotharbot »

scott_s wrote: post #73
lotharbot wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"unless you have something genuinely new to say about them." (From the guidelines.)

I contend that there is nothing genuinely new regarding religion in this thread. Also, religious discussion on science story submissions are off-topic, and almost guaranteed to turn into flamewars.

then you must have a remarkably deep education on this subject. I congratulate you.

EDIT: in response to your well-timed edit -- there is not currently a flamewar going on. Discussing the intersection of religion and science can be a fast track to a flamewar in the wrong circumstances, but these are excellent circumstances for a reasoned discussion.

Re: Earth’s Water Is Older Than the Sun

#75

Post by scott_s »

coldcode wrote: post #59

I've always wondered what percentage of water molecules on the earth have always been water molecules, i.e. since they became H20 how many have been separated by chemical processes and later recombined back into water. How you estimate that is beyond me.

How you estimate it is the third paragraph of the submission: compare the ratios of hydrogen to deuterium (hydrogen with a neutron).

Re: Earth’s Water Is Older Than the Sun

#77

Post by kirkbackus »

unclebunkers wrote: post #2

This greatly increases my expectations of life on other planets if true.

Careful. Don't miss the precedent to the "every planet could have a drink". It all hinges on "if the solar system’s formation was typical", which is a question that has not been answered.

Also, why don't they address the implications if the solar system's formation was not typical?

Re: Earth’s Water Is Older Than the Sun

#78

Post by viewer5 »

kirkbackus wrote: post #77
unclebunkers wrote: post #2

This greatly increases my expectations of life on other planets if true.

Careful. Don't miss the precedent to the "every planet could have a drink". It all hinges on "if the solar system’s formation was typical", which is a question that has not been answered. Also, why don't they address the implications if the solar system's formation was not typical?

Is the common idea currently that our solar system's formation was atypical? Or do you just mean "we just need to be sure that's the case" out of due diligence?

Re: Earth’s Water Is Older Than the Sun

#79

Post by tP5n »

nitrogen wrote: post #41
lotharbot wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Christian Fundamentalism (which is a decidedly American/English sect, 100 years old this year) is the only sect I'm aware of that takes a hard-line literalist approach to Genesis 1, and even among them there's argument as to whether the sun is literally created at that time or if it becomes visible somehow. (That idea is fairly old -- I was just reading Aquinas' take on it, written in the 1200s: http://www.ccel.org/c…

Biblical literalism is much older than 100 years, though different groups in history may have chosen different parts to take literally.

He's right, eventhough there have been other groups pushing biblical literalism in history.

Think about it, for a long time the predominant biblical scholarship was catholic biblical criticism, whose point is viewing biblical texts as having human origins. Also remember that Protestantisms critique on the catholic church was that it was too literal in its take on biblical texts, that transubstantiation for example (this is my actual body; this is my actual blood) didn't exist.

And regarding this thread: at least, please stop attempting to do biblical literalism in english. those are not your holy words.

Re: Earth’s Water Is Older Than the Sun

#80

Post by krapp »

_urga wrote: post #72
krapp wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not interested in proving it or disproving it, but rather just pointing out that Christianity keeps disproving itself, particularly when it comes to interpreting something like Genesis as anything but an ancient fable. Using science to try to validate a creation myth thousands of years removed from its intended cultural and political context seems kind of absurd - and a lot of Christians would agree with me anywa…

I think there's a difference between the scientific method (our study and understanding of observed uniformity) and the historical method (our study and understanding of events and their explanation, particularly how one event causes another). Furthermore, there's a difference between historical study (did it happen?) and frequentism (how often has it happened?). For example, if we are using words such as "didn't hap…

I don't believe the historical reality of Jesus would give or remove credibility from the Bible. Discovering that the city of Troy really existed doesn't prove that the Iliad and Odyssey happened, either, or that the Greek Gods were real. Jesus could very well have existed, while not being the Son of God.

The most crucial claim that the Bible makes is the one that all religions make - which is that the supernatural exists, and takes precedence over the natural world. It's all well and good to approach it from a historical and cultural perspective, but the leap between Jesus being real and Jesus being Christ is pretty much infinite.

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