It appears that scientists will not stop at anything to fabricate fossils older than 5,000 years old — the rough age established by the Bible according to some creationists. The scientists found the fossils in a quarry that date back to the Ordovician period. The range of the fossils is considerable from sponges and worms to nautiloids.
The quarry in Wales is well-known for fossils but this layer appears to have been missed. They were once part of an ocean that existed between Scotland and England/Wales. Now there is only a cultural ocean.
The find includes a new range of organism never previously found from this period.
Source: BBC
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For anyone interested in the article but not the standard argument about religion vs science above: the Ordovician period is the one that immediately followed the Cambrian period, at the beginning of the Paleozoic Era. See time spiral. These fossils just barely post-date the Cambrian Explosion, which makes them less of a head-turner. But they show a bunch of new species that we hadn’t known were produced in the Explosion.
“It seems like you are saying things outside of science aren’t worth considering.”
Not at all. Science is a methodology for interrogating the nature of reality and a body of knowledge accumulated by the methodology over the centuries. It’s not a religion. The study of religion, especially the comparative study of religion, can yield some interesting ethical commonalities such as the value of the Golden Rule; a concept of ethical reciprocity that managed to find its way into every major world religion.
“But seeing as how it is a deficient worldview you should abandon it.”
Seeing how the belief in the supernatural is a deficient worldview, you should abandon it. So right back at ya. Or you could learn to mind your own business regarding my worldview and I’ll mind mine. “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” Matthew 7:1-2. That’s part of the hypocrisy of Evangelical Christians that drives me nuts. You don’t want people to judge your beliefs but you sure to feel the need to judge others . . . and proselytize. No one says you have to choose science and empiricism over the supernatural. The facts are presented and backed by measurable evidence. You are free to believe them or not. You like to pay lip service to free will but you sure have no problem in telling others that their choices made out of free will are wrong because they don’t think like you do. Maybe you should look into the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Maybe you should consider that free will includes the choice to believe in a different supernatural being than you do or to believe in none at all. If you don’t respect others beliefs, you should not expect others to respect yours. But again, science isn’t a belief. It’s a methodology for interrogating the nature of reality and a body of knowledge accumulated by the methodology over the centuries. It’s not a religion. It’s a way of thinking. Religion is a way of believing. They are not necessarily incompatible, but they are not the same thing either.
RobertH, it was just the theme, not anything in particular you said. I have been musing about a lot of things lately and for some reason I went off on a kind of tangent. I have been angry about many things recently and find I am becoming less tactful and more prickly. I think a lot about justice, empathy and human rights. What I see in the real world makes me really angry. I am more of a mystic than Gene, but still a pretty hard nosed scientist. I want to see stuff, and have no trouble separating the spiritual and philosophical from the scientific and provable.
A lot of where I am coming from arises from burying one of my children, my teenage grandson and my wife of 55 years. All in a relatively short time span.
@Otteray Scribe,
Wow, I am sorry to hear about your losses and in a short time-span. A lot of what you just said is going on right now with me! I too look at the world and am extremely upset with what I see, even so in the actions of other Christians with their war-approval. I too have been less than tactful: Just the other day I made a post on my favorite forum calling Christians that support war neocon bloodthirsty warmongers. Hah! I personally am a Christian-libertarian and follow the austrian school of economics.
Gene, those believers who look forward to God coming back had better be careful what they pray for. I have a feeling the most “pious” would have a real shock. I recall a comment made by an Episcopal priest friend of mine about that. He said, “God comes back and they discover She is Black and brother, is She pissed.”
“I didn’t mistake anything.”
Except for the nature of science, Robert. “The person that thinks they should only rely on the empirical is sorely mistaken because that belief itself cannot be supported through empiricism.” Really. You respond with reductio ad absurdum. No one said “only” except you.
Science handles the unknown by saying “we don’t know” – admitting uncertainty and dealing with it in as rational a way as possible by addressing probability. A good example of this methodology is found in “An Elementary Approach to Thinking Under Uncertainty” by Ruth Beyth-Marom and Shlomith Dekel.
Religion handles the unknown by resorting to the supernatural for an explanation – God’s will. 1 Thessalonians 5:21 has nothing to do with how a religious mindset deals with the unknown or uncertainty. It’s about value judgments (“holding on to the good”), which may or may not be empirically derived. Testing everything for a value judgment – a culturally contextual concept – is not the same thing as testing everything for empirical veracity. Your good may not be the good of another (see the differences between what is good even among the Abrahamic religions), but a fact that can be derived from distilling hypothesis through repeatable testing is a fact. You are entitled to your own values, but you are not entitled to your own facts.
Your counter-argument, such as it is, is suggesting that belief in the unprovable but certain even if not backed by evidence, logic or reason is better than belief in the provable although uncertain backed by evidence, logic and reason.
Utter nonsense, but nonsense you are free to believe and express.
The mistake is indeed yours, however, and that mistake is as to the nature of science and its claims about God. God is not provable by measurement and testing, therefor science has nothing to say about God other than His existence is not provable as a matter of applying the scientific method. Nothing more, nothing less.
RobertH, You started me thinking about the difference between Christians and those who claim to be Christians. There is a difference. For example, the parable of the Good Samaritan. Some in the Christian church evade the obvious in claiming the Samaritan represents the organized church in saving the souls of those who have “fallen by the wayside.”
These “Christians” tend to ignore the obvious and much simpler interpretation of being commanded to help the injured person by giving of time and caring to those less fortunate. Just the opposite of what some would have you believe. There are Christians and then those I prefer to call christianists. Those who hide prejudice, greed and self aggrandizement behind a facade of piety. Those are the ones who would force a poor mother to carry a baby to term at the risk of her own life, deny her prenatal care through lack of health care insurance and then abandon her baby once the baby is delivered. You are on your own, kid. How often do we hear that? Some of it comes from a few commenters on this blog.
If someone promotes the actual teachings of Jesus, they are accused of being socialists or fascists. Go figure.
Otteray Scribe: How did I get you thinking about that? I do take the teachings of Jesus very seriously and my own thinking has been revolutionized in the past 2 and 1/2 years (how long I’ve been a Christian). I think you set up a straw man with how Christians treat abortion, a mother in dire circumstances, etc. I am not going to bother responding to that.
Gene H.: My whole point is that people who cling to scientism or some form of empiricism have a deficient worldview. You haven’t shown this not to be the case so I am not sure what you are continuing with. Honestly.
You misunderstand what “good” in 1 Thes 5:21 means. It is not about values at all but what is right or correct. This is exactly what is done in science.
Religion does resort to the supernatural, so?
There are just as many people blindly believing in various forms of scientism or empiricism as there are in religion. I happen to have come to Christianity specifically because of the Historicity of Jesus and other arguments (Kalam, Ontological, Moral, Teleological, etc. For more on these youtube WIlliam Lane Craig or visit his site reasonablefaith.org).
I currently agree, science cannot prove or disprove God. So? God isn’t a scientific hypothesis (even in Intelligent Design).
I don’t hold to anything without evidence, reason, or logic. It seems like you are saying things outside of science aren’t worth considering. If I am reading you wrong I apologize. But seeing as how it is a deficient worldview you should abandon it.
“Finally, last thing I wanted to say, it is naive and patently illogical to believe only in things that can be empirically proven or falsified.”
You mistake belief for understanding uncertainty, Robert. If one understands the quantum nature of uncertainty and the nature of Gödel’s work on his Incompleteness Theorems, you might realize that logic has everything to do with the choice to choice to believe in that which is empirically proven or falsified. You don’t have to have perfect knowledge to distill empirical truths. You just have to be comfortable with uncertainty and accustomed to the fact that as new data emerges you’ll have to adapt your worldview to accommodate it. You have to be comfortable dealing with probabilities. Comfort with this idea of uncertainty also requires an amount of interrogative skepticism. This is in itself antithetical to religion which relies on certainty derived solely from belief in “God’s Plan” and usually unquestioning belief. In the words of Voltaire, “Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous.”
I didn’t mistake anything. You just didn’t understand my post. I meant exactly what I said regarding believing only in things that can be empirically or scientifically proven ( a tad redundant).
The person that thinks they should only rely on the empirical is sorely mistaken because that belief itself cannot be supported through empiricism. So, since it is a narrow and flawed belief system one should continue looking for something superior.
Btw, which religion are you thinking of? Christianity? I think you have a faulty understanding of Christianity (see: 1 Thessalonians 5:21, for instance). Christians are to be intellectually engaged and to “test everything.”
Evolution (or science) vs. Religion is a false dichotomy.
The Bible does not disclose the age of the earth (that’s right, it doesn’t!).
In response to other commenters: God can be proven through logic. take a look at Plantinga’s Ontological Argument (or youtube William Lane Craig discussing it/defending it).
Science cannot prove many things: That there are other minds, Moral values and duties, Science itself, and Math and logic (science cannot prove math or logic because it presupposes the validity of those things so it would become circular to attempt to prove it).
Finally, last thing I wanted to say, it is naive and patently illogical to believe only in things that can be empirically proven or falsified. Just think about it. Can that statement of belief pass it’s own test? It cannot be empirically proven and if it can be falsified then why hold on to it! Most modern philosophers completely reject these notions.
“In other words, atheists arrogantly think today’s science has all the answers to prove that a Personal Creator God could not have created us, and given us free will and responsibility to own our choices.”
Nonsense. Science doesn’t say it has “all the answers to prove that a Personal Creator God could not have created us, and given us free will and responsibility to own our choices.” Science (and logic) says that the idea of a transcendent God is not provable. Even if you take into account the multidimensional aspect of string theory/m-theory, which in theory could allows for a transdimensional sentient instigator of this universe, it still wouldn’t be God as Christians define God. It would be mortal and as constrained by entropy as everything else – perhaps at a different rate – but still subject to entropy. Not an immortal, all knowing, all seeing creator of all – just the instigator of the big bang (the contact between two membranes) that created this specific universe – not a transcendent God who exists outside the multiverse. God’s existence, in the Christian sense of God, is simply not provable, disprovable or testable. If something is not provable, disprovable or testable, it’s simply not science. Science is concrete because it is provable, disprovable and testable. That it is an imperfect knowledge set does not invalidate it or the methodology behind it. In fact, a perfect knowledge set is impossible according to the mathematics of Kurt Gödel.
That some people prefer to live by knowledge that can be empirically tested and measured and tested simply shows their preference (a reflection of free will) to live by the known and knowable rather than some dictate that allegedly comes from what may or may not be an imaginary being. Given all of the horrors done through out history in the name of God (and gods), such a choice is perfectly rational and reasoned. Believe what you like. No one is forcing you to believe in science. Listen to your own Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Don’t try to force others to believe what you believe. It’s courteous if nothing else and it’s the right thing to do because it avoids conflict. It’s their choice. Don’t try to force your choices on them. That’s a violation of their free will.
If you want to believe there is a consequence for not sharing your belief? Knock yourself out. However, opinions can (and do) vary. Most non-believers don’t begrudge you your choice as long as your choice doesn’t require their participation or harm them (or others).
Frankly,
There are a LOT of inconsistencies in science.
Contradictions, incompatible data sets are published everyday in all the real science journals. Science is extremely messy and confusing for the uninitiated. Majority of current scientific issues are NOT settled.
Too many atheists cling to their “science” like (Charlie Brown’s Linus’ blanket) as an article of belief and comfort.
Science will tell you, what we think we know as settled science, as compared to the knowledge out there, is infinitely SMALL.
In other words, atheists arrogantly think today’s science has all the answers to prove that a Personal Creator God could not have created us, and given us free will and responsibility to own our choices.
But Matthew, look at what you are saying about your own created universe. To your child, you are like a mini-god who created the constant four walls of your house. Your child grew up learning & exploring within that home. That home never changed (unless you moved).
So we all grow up on created planet earth, round, with no walls, to explore. Full of changing adaptive life (called variations within species).
plus a large universe to explore.