Evolution vs. Creation.

[Martin]

Or you know, created people thinking that they existed before. The matrix has you.

[Dan]

sylvester-27 wrote:

also Peter did start the church and constantine was just a Roman Emperor dude that accepted christianity and made Rome chrisitan, correct me if im wrong. and if im wrong provide some sources.

My point was not about who made chrisitan as how it was started. From what i have read and come to understand the orgins of it where as an undergorund movement during the roman empire. It whould have to be undergroud b/c the romains whould have killed them off and i blive tryed to if it was not. Thous it whould be a cult. This fact alone dose not prove anything, only it was to point out that saying somthing is less b/c of it's orgins is at least falwed in your case much above.

[Albrecd]

Quote:

changing the calibration scale for say carbon dating would not work, because it's not something that people can just change. It's based upon the rate of decay of certain particles, and the rate of decay does not change

Actually, it is quite possible to change the calibration. Carbon dating isn't something that you can just say "O, it is this value so it's this old." The first thing is to relate certain ages with certain values, so they take objects that they know the age of (usually old casket lids with dates printed on them) and check the carbon value. This tells them that when the value is this, the object is this old. Very easy to change.

[sylvester-27]

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You are basically saying that thousands of scientists are fudging their data and lying about it, and that the scientific community encourages this conspiracy. Actually, occasionally it is revealed that a scientist fabricated some data (often when the results aren't reproducible), and this is treated very seriously. Since the evidence for the age of the Earth comes from many different branches of science, you are also saying that this practice is quite widespread, which completely undermines the importance of science.

I did not say that thousands of scientists are fudging their data. sry i will finish this ltr i gotta go to english

[md]

Albrecd wrote:

Quote:

changing the calibration scale for say carbon dating would not work, because it's not something that people can just change. It's based upon the rate of decay of certain particles, and the rate of decay does not change

Actually, it is quite possible to change the calibration. Carbon dating isn't something that you can just say "O, it is this value so it's this old." The first thing is to relate certain ages with certain values, so they take objects that they know the age of (usually old casket lids with dates printed on them) and check the carbon value. This tells them that when the value is this, the object is this old. Very easy to change.

That is not at all how it works. Though yes there is some calibration required it is taken from the level of carbon-14 in hte air; never an "old casket lid". The level of carbon-14 in the air in the past can be measured (I don't exactly remember how), and from that you can get an estimate for the level of carbon 14 in the object your measuring (by estimate I mean to within 1 or 2%). Then you measure hte level of carbon-14 left; and from that calculate the age based on half life. Records of the level of carbon-14 are very open and their methods are well documented. Because arceologists rely on it so much dating techniques of any kind are extremely well supported scientifically. Just do some research.

[Albrecd]

Quote:

The level of carbon-14 in the air in the past can be measured (I don't exactly remember how), and from that you can get an estimate for the level of carbon 14 in the object your measuring

But the relationship between the level of Carbon 14 and the age of an object is a Bell curve. You cannot just take the measurement of the air and draw a line of best fit through zero, many measurements must be taken before you can determine the relationship.

[codemage]

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Peter was also the first Pope and it's pretty far out to believe that the Roman Catholic Church was a branch off of a cult.

...and...

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Constantine (founder of Byzantium) was responsible for making Christianity into what it is today

Peter was the first Pope according to the tradition fo the Roman Catholic Church. The RCC didn't really exist in an official capacity until 325AD, so nobody called him the Pope, etc, until much later... kind of a moot point, anyhow.

It's not far out to believe that the RCC was a branch off of a cult. There are a lot of similarities with early Christianity and some other genuine cults (such as baptism and rituals involving blood like communion). Based on the research I've read there isn't a very good probability of a direct connection, unless it's the other way around.

Out of curiosity, early Christianity fits much of the definition of a cult all by its self..

"A religious sect..."
(Early Christianity began as a sect of Judaism)
"...considered to be extreme..."
(Many of them were willingly martyred for their beliefs. Sounds extreme to me).
"...living in an unconventional manner..."
(The gospel of Luke was written to explain the religion to perplexed roman governors).
"under the guidance of an authoritarian, charismatic leader."
(Jesus, Peter and Paul all fit that description..)

[Albrecd]

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It's not far out to believe that the RCC was a branch off of a cult. There are a lot of similarities with early Christianity and some other genuine cults (such as baptism and rituals involving blood like communion).

Perhaps the cults are branch offs of the Roman Catholic Faith. Basically the reason that there are multiple Dinominations of the Church is because the church is "continually sliding away from the Bible" and as it does so, parts of the church decide that it has become corrupt and split off as new churches or dinominations. I think that it is very possible that these "cults" are split-offs from the church with twisted ideals (Not that it's my place to judge their Ideals as twisted) or perhaps a church that has fallen very far into corruption.

[sylvester-27]

Quote:

Perhaps the cults are branch offs of the Roman Catholic Faith. Basically the reason that there are multiple Dinominations of the Church is because the church is "continually sliding away from the Bible" and as it does so, parts of the church decide that it has become corrupt and split off as new churches or dinominations. I think that it is very possible that these "cults" are split-offs from the church with twisted ideals (Not that it's my place to judge their Ideals as twisted) or perhaps a church that has fallen very far into corruption.

Perhaps the cults are branched off from the Roman Catholic Faith andit is true that the more church's that branch away from the Bible's teachings are sliding away from the Bible's true teachings. I doubt the church, at the present, is corrupt but it has beenat times

[codemage]

There was no Roman Catholic Faith until 325 AD. We're talking about the formation of the religion before it became a big formal heirarchical organization.

Google (or wikipedia or answers.com) "mystery religion".

The cults talked about here aren't spinoffs of early Christianity. They developed separately. It's a matter of historical debate whether any elements were shared back and forth after their birth.

The cults mentioned are also, for the most part, dead. Many of them had particularly barbaric or cruel rituals - so they'd be banned from society anyway.

[Brightguy]

sylvester-27 wrote:

please stop insulting me and for the last time i am not cement in what i believe. i change what i believe, although never out of christianity...

To me, it seems like you're afraid to think, even for a second, that it could be wrong. What are you afraid of? You don't have anything to lose.

Albrecd wrote:

Actually, it is quite possible to change the calibration. Carbon dating isn't something that you can just say "O, it is this value so it's this old." The first thing is to relate certain ages with certain values, so they take objects that they know the age of (usually old casket lids with dates printed on them) and check the carbon value. This tells them that when the value is this, the object is this old. Very easy to change.

Where did you get those ideas about Radiometric Dating...? I guess my links aren't showing up for you, so I'll post a quick summary right here:

Quote:

• There are well over forty different radiometric dating methods, and scores of other methods such as tree rings and ice cores.
  
• All of the different dating methods agree--they agree a great majority of the time over millions of years of time. Some Christians make it sound like there is a lot of disagreement, but this is not the case. The disagreement in values needed to support the position of young-Earth proponents would require differences in age measured by orders of magnitude (e.g., factors of 10,000, 100,000, a million, or more). The differences actually found in the scientific literature are usually close to the margin of error, usually a few percent, not orders of magnitude!
  
• Vast amounts of data overwhelmingly favor an old Earth. Several hundred laboratories around the world are active in radiometric dating. Their results consistently agree with an old Earth. Over a thousand papers on radiometric dating were published in scientifically recognized journals in the last year, and hundreds of thousands of dates have been published in the last 50 years. Essentially all of these strongly favor an old Earth.
  
• Radioactive decay rates have been measured for over sixty years now for many of the decay clocks without any observed changes. And it has been close to a hundred years since the uranium-238 decay rate was first determined.
  
• Both long-range and short-range dating methods have been successfully verified by dating lavas of historically known ages over a range of several thousand years.
  
• The mathematics for determining the ages from the observations is relatively simple.

I don't know how to make this any simpler: there's no conspiracy to invent data to make the Earth look old. This is really what science is telling us, and the methods are not being hidden at all... they are openly available.

If you still believe there is a conspiracy, then how can you accept the rest of science? For example, you would have to also have to reject theories like ice varve formation, plate tectonics, relativity (light travels at a constant speed), even the fusion in the Sun (since it must be 100,000 years old at a very minimum - current theory says that it takes the photons that long just to leave the Sun). And if you've ever studied astronomy, then it's clear that either the universe is old or it was made to look old.

I don't think you even realise your bias. To you, all these dating methods are bad. That's okay, after all, maybe more accurate methods will be found later. But what's a good dating method to you? Any one that gives the specific time frame that you're looking for. You shouldn't judge science this way. I think there's a technical term for it... "screwed-up science" or something.

sylvester-27 wrote:

I did not say that thousands of scientists are fudging their data. sry i will finish this ltr i gotta go to english

Thousands of scientific papers have been written about radiometric dating, and they all come to similar conclusions about the age of the Earth.

[1of42]

sylvester-27 wrote:

Quote:

Perhaps the cults are branch offs of the Roman Catholic Faith. Basically the reason that there are multiple Dinominations of the Church is because the church is "continually sliding away from the Bible" and as it does so, parts of the church decide that it has become corrupt and split off as new churches or dinominations. I think that it is very possible that these "cults" are split-offs from the church with twisted ideals (Not that it's my place to judge their Ideals as twisted) or perhaps a church that has fallen very far into corruption.

Perhaps the cults are branched off from the Roman Catholic Faith andit is true that the more church's that branch away from the Bible's teachings are sliding away from the Bible's true teachings. I doubt the church, at the present, is corrupt but it has beenat times

The Roman Catholic church was a cult before it became a mainstream religion. Get that through your head, because it's not conjecture, it is a fact. The man who was responsible for this mainstreaming of Christianity was Constantine.

And, finally, I have to point out that the entire Protestant Reformation came about because the Catholic church was being corrupt and untrue to the bible - the Lutherans in particular split away so that they could more closely follow scripture. The Catholic church may be the most conservative, but it's not the most true to scripture.

[Albrecd]

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And, finally, I have to point out that the entire Protestant Reformation came about because the Catholic church was being corrupt and untrue to the bible - the Lutherans in particular split away so that they could more closely follow scripture. The Catholic church may be the most conservative, but it's not the most true to scripture.

That is exactly what I said, but without so much accusation toward the Catholics.

[1of42]

Well, I suppose my post sounded a little acrimonious, but frankly, that was the cause of the Reformation.Pussy-footing about it is poitnless, because it pure and simply happened because of the Catholic Church's excesses (buying a piece of paper that purges all of your sins, the money used to pay for which is spent on hedonistic festivals in Rome anyone?).

[lyam_kaskade]

Wow. This is a really long thread.

Of course, you should all realize that true nirvana (heaven) is achieved only by escaping the cycle of life and death (thus ending suffering).




just thought I should throw that out there...