Quote:
On 2002-06-27 15:39, The Curtmudgeon wrote:
And Traztx, is God to be blamed because mankind invents theories that require billions of years to work out, when the evidence of the stars themselves in no way requires such theories?
|
My opinion: I wouldn't blame God for anything man invents. If man invents a theory that corresponds to data, then blame the data. If the theory did not correspond to data, then the theorist is at fault due to error or some other intention other than seeking the truth (fame? control?). If two theories explain the same data, then also look at why one was chosen over another.
Quote:
|
God created the stars as they are; men look up at them and, desiring to deny God, make up a story about how the stars must have been formed through a multi-billion-year process.
|
I don't see how such a story would in itself be a denial of a divine creator. Multi-billion is really big, but still finite and does not explain the first cause. However, it would be a denial of other stories that other men wrote into the scripture. It would propose that such stories are false.
Quote:
|
But other than the so-called end results of that process, there is no evidence of the process itself.
|
But there is a process going on and some of it can be observed. The process of nuclear fusion, for example. We can detect the energies and by-products from the sun that correspond to the energies and by-products of fusion in laboratory experiments. Sure some other process might produce the same data, but it is reasonable to suggest that fusion is occuring in the sun.
Quote:
|
And the end results--the stars, the planets, the nebulae, etc.--don't require that one particular process to be here.
|
I agree. Unless there is a way to get to data that eliminates some possible processes, you don't really know which is the actual one that happened.
Quote:
|
So blaming God for the "appearance" of billions of years, when it was men who created the perception of a need for billions of years in the first place, is rather naive.
|
Agreed, except that I would change the phrase "created the perception" to "observed evidence".
-Tommy