Old Earth vs. New Earth, Creationism and the Big Bang
Tonight, I sat and watched (at Bible Study) an anti-Evolution video. It was better than I expected, but sadly predictable in its fear-mongering.
The minister sitting next to me, a woman from Nigeria, kept shaking her head in disbelief every time someone said "5 million years ago..." etc etc. She firmly believes the earth is, give or take, 6000 years old. I know her motives are sincere, but it's difficult to reconcile this conviction with massive amounts of evidence to the contrary.
What do you think? Do you think the earth must be about 6000 years old, the literal Biblical date? Or something else? And while we're at it, let's toss in Creation vs. Big Bang, because that's pretty central to the subject. Your thoughts and opinions are welcome.
Dogmas can be established as long as they relate only to faith
nube said -
real science is self correction and can say 'oh, wait. new data, new theory.' People locked into a religious dogma are screwed in a debate with a system like this, unless they're willing to reinterpret dogma.
Not necessarily. People with religious dogmas can co-exist with science based people (or even co-exist within themselves - as I do - seeing as I am religious adherent and a scientist) as long as their dogmas do not cover scientific issues.
The Catholic Church found this out when they tried to correct Galileo. Fortunately this was over an issue which was never dogmatically declared to begin with so the Church was not shown to be in a state of dogmatic error on the point of disagreement. Still it taught them not to try to apply their interpretation of divine revelation on areas which it was never intended to address.
Dogmas can exist and can be completely unchangable, as long as we are careful to only declare them on matters of faith and morals.
Science can create laws and speak of knowing facts as long as it means having chosen the best theory at that moment in terms of predictive power and offering control over our environment.