The book refers to the Hebrew calendar as evidence that the moon has not moved for the past 6,000 years or so. This is because the Hebrew calendar is one based on the phases of the moon.
Unfortunatly, the Hebrew calendar now running strong in the year 5,763 has only existed for about 3,000 years. At this time, the high priests of Solomon's Temple created the calendar which had a begining date to coincide with the begining of the world. They looked at the stories in the Torah, and decided with all the characters in the Torah leading up to that point and adding up all their ages, the world was created some 3,000 years prior. While this means that a literal interpretation suggests that the world is only 5,763 years old, niether I nor any other Jew I've met have ever suggested the world was anything less than several billion years old. Regardless, people have kept close tabs on the calendar since its creation some 3,000 years ago. So, you could say that according to the Hebrew calendar the moon has moved only a negligible amount in the last 3,000 years, but not 6,000 unless you want to use an unreliable source(the bible) as evidence of such.

Which book?

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

He must be referring to The Book, you know The Book by The BA. This is the forum. I'll have to look it up.

About the poll: I voted "no".

A creationist either understands or does not understand the distinction between science and faith. If the distinction is understood then it is possible to have an interesting discussion. If it is not understood then the person will likely be unwilling to answer the questions put to him/her. Either way there is no reason to get angry. For example a recently banned creationist refused to answer scientific questions put to him but instead insisted on throwing out biblical quotes and interpretations. Why get upset at that? It is what it is.

I'm not sure what the poll has to do with the OP, but I did look up Hebrew calendar in the index of my copy of BA, and sure enough on page 182, it's mentioned that the Hebrew calendar has been around for 5,800 years, and that is evidence that the lunar cycle has remained unchanged in that time. I'm no expert on the Hebrew calendar, but this website says that the historical Hebrew calendar dates to AM4119, which is 359AD. The website says:
It goes on to say that the Hebrew calendar was greatly influenced by the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BC. So, the OP seems to be right, the structure of the Hebrew calendar as we know it today has probably only existed for 3000 years.

Well, I'd frankly find it a little hard to believe that the calendar came into being at the same time as `creation` was occuring, it had to come later, just a matter of how much later.

I don't get angry as much as frustrated. THEY get angry when I point out that their "evidence" starts and ends in the Bible.

tom

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Paddle faster!! I hear banjo music!!

No i don't get angry , i just try try not to laugth at them.

We don't have many of these creationists in France where i live. And they are still very shy and don't go public.

But sometimes you encounter people saying "Atfer all , what proof have you about evolution , your theory about the origin of the earth and so on ". "How can you be so sure ?" then it can be touchy , but if you scratch the surface these people have been influenced by the creationists.

And you have also plain ignorant people ready to believe anything. for instance in a discussion : "the sun is turning around the earth ,isn it ?" and looking at your face " Er no, may the contrary, of course it is the contrary !"

Then you undestand some people know asolutely nothing. Education have passed on them like water on a duck's feathers.And not only they don't care , but very often they are rather proud to be ignorant.

my brotherinlaw, who was then a born again Christian, got annoyed with me for telling them that they(him and my sister) should tell the children at their church that creationism is just a theory. Now those type of people want teachers and scientists to say that about evolution. I think people have every right to get annoyed with these people.

I do, but I probably shouldn't. Annoyed is probably a better word for it. It is frustrating talking with them sometimes. Two of the most brilliant people I know are creationists, but they refuse to consider any possibility that doesn't fit their religious worldview or timetable. Start telling them about a galaxy that's a few billion lightyears away, or an ancient civilization that's 8000 years old and you'll be promptly informed that you've been deceived by atheist falsehoods.

I suppose it's annoyance most of all with a philosophy and theology that claims to know everything infallibly, and holds disagreement or disbelief as a moral fault. Perfectly well meaning people who believe YEC or ID will assault enterprises like biology or astronomy because they consistently produce results that conflict with the "infallible" worldview that they've accepted. A lot of flack has been put in the air about science's inherent flaws as a "materialist" philosophy, or about our "atheist" ulterior motives that's just not true. The possiblity that science arrives at the conclusions that it does because those conclusions are apparent from physical evidence is discounted.

And how is someone like a high-school student or a disinterested citizen supposed to decide between these two competing models of biology anyway? A student has no firsthand access to evidence or anything. He only hears both sides' allegations and can only make a decision on the truth of something so secondhand and remote from everyday experience based on social pressure.

I suppose the root of it is that when people must learn about things, and make decisions about them secondhand, especially while they're young, there is little they can do to choose between two competing worldviews. And when one of them is promoted by people operating off an entirely different definition of "TRUTH" (with capital letters, for emphasis I guess), and interested in converting as many of them as possible for an entirely different reason than the plausibility of their model to explain the world (in order to convert and "save" them), then people who stand for the other sort of truth (knowledge of the actual state of the world) have to defend themselves.

Will we one day decide what is true based on how popular it is, or how it fits our pre-conceived notions? If that is the case, then any ideologue operating off of an "infallible" source will be capable of leading people over a cliff.

So there is a natural emnity between those who "know" the TRUTH and those who attempt to find out the truth. The former make it very difficult for the latter to operate.


And it isn't just YECs either. In politics this sort of behavior reigns supreme. I have had teachers who would, with a straight face, denigrate democracy and laud communism to our political science classes. There's an endless list of excuses out there as to why one is succeeding and the other failing when, according to the TRUTH it should be the other way around. Many high-schoolers are taught to be communists despite the horrific effect it has had on the world. Fortunately, about half of them are cured of it after getting a job and working for a living.

I get more depressed than angry. The latest issue of Skeptical Inquirer is mostly about so-called Intelligent Design, and just looking at it gets me down. I don't know if I'll be able to read it.

When I look at the world, and how screwed up it is because of religion, I just want to end it all. But I don't have any planet-destroying devices, and besides, I just bought 12 years' worth of shaver parts...

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
-- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684

Err, NowhereMan? I suggest you not destroy the world, Illudium Pu-36 Explosive Space Modulator (TM) or no. There are plenty of good, kind, loving, logical, sensible people out there of all religions. Trouble is, they don't make the news.

So give the world a chance, mmkay?

- Maha (IDers tick me off too, but I don't let it get to me) Vailo

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When you get down to it, Science answers how. Religion answers why. - hippietrekx

Creationists, IDers, etc., make me angry. Why? Because anyone who refuses to look at evidence makes me angry.

I see two classes of people (not all people are in one or the other): Those Who Are Always Right and Those Who Are Never Wrong.

Jay, as an example, is a Person Who Is Always Right. Now, I'm sure he'd correct me about that and say that he isn't, but here's why I include him in the category.

If Jay tells you something is true, he has evidence for it. He can tell you why it's true--or, when there is no "why" available, what shows it to be true. On those occasions when he is wrong (and despite the category titles, people in both categories are, sometimes--or, in some cases of the latter category, frequently), he will admit it. Jay's not the only person on this board in this category, but he's certainly the best-known aside from Phil and Fraser, and using either of them as my example wouldn't be fair to the other.

My boyfriend's brother, and most creationists of my experience, are Never Wrong. Or, from a more objective perspective, they just won't ever admit it. In fact, my boyfriend's brother is wrong a lot, and even when he doesn't know the subject terribly well and I do, he won't admit that he's wrong about it. As an example, he was arguing some point of Elizabethan English weaponry with me. Now, weaponry's not my strong suit, but Elizabethan England is. However, some friend of his who studies Japan of the same era told him something about Elizabethan weapons, and that was obviously right over what I'd read in three books.

This enfuriates me. I shouldn't let it get to me, and I'm pretty sure the fact that I do has something or other to do with the manic depression/other emotional issues, but it makes me very angry indeed. In order to avoid the emotional entanglement, I now ask what evidence a creationist would accept to show evolution's validity before I'll discuss it with them. Usually, I don't end up discussing it.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I think sound bites constitute evidence to creationists, especially if they come from a tv evangalist waving a bible about and saying "God" in a deap voice and casting various people into hell if they wont allow themselves to be brainwashed.

Instead of blowing up the planet, I'd rather just take all the scientists, teachers, people on this board, and all the other intelligent, sensible people (religious or otherwise) on the planet, and take them to live on another planet. That way, we can start our own civilization (hopefully) free from the woo-wooism and quackery of the rest of the world.

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here we go, the world is spinning
when it stops, it's just beginning

sun comes up, we laugh and we cry
sun goes down, and then we all die

Touched by his noodly appendage

Unfortunately, the secular world forms tribes that have their own woo-woo isms just as easily as religious people do. The need to be critical extends to your own in-group as well as to any others, and we need to make sure we're not behaving under tribal or exclusionary impulses either. These impulses come naturally and unconciously to humanity. Getting rid of them is likely to be an uncomfortable concious process, contrary to our emotions and instincts, much like a calculus problem.

In fact, self criticism of the groups we are in is probably more valuable from a moral standpoint than criticism of other groups as woo-woos. After all, we can keep our own groups on track, while we have little effect on others' groups (we're heretics to them). A society full of self critical people will manage to beat back superstitions and orthodoxies of all sorts, while a society full of other-critical people will fragment into mutually hostile tribes that don't listen to each other and don't self-examine. I fear the latter is happening currently, and that there are undesirable tribal aspects to, or at least within, all parties.

Doesn't stop me from having very well-defined convictions about what is right, doesn't make me a reletavist of any sort, but unfortunately political, religious, and other non-immediate thought these days is dominated less by framing a coherent model and giving evidence for it than engaging in tribal mischaracterization and propoganda ploys. The group has slipped the bonds of it's role as an advocate for a philosophy and political model, and the philosophy has been subverted to the existence of group. Now many political or ideological, or religious groups exist only for their own sake, with their model and code of ethics being more of an excuse or a soundbyte for mischaracterizing the out-group than for advocating a course of action.



Of course, examining the politics of previous eras in history, the things that were written by the various parties involved, it seems that nothing much has really changed. The philosophy was always sold with appeals to emotion, the tribe, and popular notions, rather than directly through reason and evidence. Stuff written during the bank wars of the 1800s, stuff written by the various parties in the 1890's ect. So at least we know that we're not doing too much worse in terms of using reason. The golden age where we were all philosophers and all primarily rational people probably never existed, and so it's probably an unreasonable standard by which to be pessimistic about the human race.

But just be warned that being secular, or "rationalist" doesn't make you rational, and doesn't automatically immunise you against tribalism. To guard against that, you have to always make sure you know what you're talking about, not your group.

Enough of my rambling for now...

We should love the creationist, hate crazy creationism. [Sound familiar? ]

You might discover that many creationists could become great friends of yours. Most will go out of their way to help others, etc. I watched the most ardent creationist (YEC) I know spend many hours helping in rennovating a house for someone with no money, and he did it with kindness and appreciation for all of us who, on occasion, pitched-in to help. On the other hand, he gave a seminar trashing Big Bang and other mainstream ideas. The problem is not him, but the lack of a more plausible scenario which supports his faith in a manner consistent with scripture. [I believe this scenario exists.]

Of course, there are others who will always use God's name in vain by ranting about something they feel will gather followers, and others can't disprove. Televangelists come up with some crazy stuff. [Paul, of the New Testament, also got his fill of these people even in his day.]

Also, keep in mind many, if not most, "creationists" accept evolution and mainstream science. It is the hard nose literalists, often more active, which causes the temptation to generalize the term "creationism" in a pejorative manner.

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

I voted 'no'. Rather, I simply roll my eyes, confident in my limited knowledge of science.

I did know a literalist once on my ship, and heard him discussing his idea with another person. He emphasized on the Earth being thousands, not millions, thousands of years old. He then added that all science is just theories.
Technically, he's only partially true. There is, of course, the theory of realitivity, theory of gravity, and so forth.
What was weirder is that after his talk, I realized that the very ship I was on contridicted his claim; science made possible the devices that provide power for the ship; our nuclear reactors are most definately a product of science.

Oddly enough, he wasn't the most compliant worker.

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I calculated the odds of this succeeding versus the odds I was doing something incredibly stupid...and I went ahead anyway. - Crow T. Robot

Godspeed, John Glenn. - Scott Carpenter

And these atomic bombs that science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men that used them.
- H.G Wells, The World Set Free

To the conspiracy crowd, radiation is a big Boogey Man that inspires terror and death in all who encounter it. - JayUtah

Ok ...

A Sailor, Who Doesn't Know, How OLD, The Earth Is ...

I'm Scared Now!

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If you Ignore YOUR Rights, they Will go away.