Can Christians Be Scientists?

[Lightning the Lulu]

Nerdologist

The Legendary Guest

Nerdologist

The Legendary Guest

Nerdologist

Right. But that ancestor might have been a primitive monkey, which would make all apes (and thus all humans) monkeys as well, in almost the same sense that all mammals are fish.

If we go back far enough, all life has a common ancestor but even the connection to monkeys seems to baffle creationists, so I try to keep it simple.

Not that it works. emotion_facepalm

It's sad, considering that biology is generally quite a bit simpler than the more rigorous sciences such as physics and chemistry.

I should retract my initial statement that apes are thought to be descendants of monkeys. Upon further research (using the undeniably trustworthy source known as Google) it doesn't appear that this reflects the scientific consensus. I thought the simplest explanation would be that apes were monkeys who had lost their tails, with a few other, less prominent differences in phenotype. However, the current fossil candidate for the common ancestor of apes and monkeys has a mixture of monkey-like and ape-like features, if I understand correctly; it may not have all of the qualities of either branch of primates. And the skeleton is too incomplete to tell whether or not the animal had a tail.

I agree. Plus I always loved biology.

That would be the common ancestor I mentioned. See what I mean when I say it wouldn't work to explain it? Creationists don't want to address the fact that in humans (and other tailless primates) the coccyx is the remnant of a vestigial tail....

I love biology too. Its simplicity makes it all the more beautiful.

It's pretty easy to deny that the coccyx is a vestigial structure. Especially for the devoutly religious. Common design implies a common designer, and all that. There are definitely much more persuasive evidences of evolution, but none of them are adequate for everyone.

True, true, most good clear evidence gets glossed over with that same "reasoning". I get so much flack here in the South, usually something like:

"I dint c** frum no muhnkah!"
Me: Of course not, you came from your momma.

rolleyes

[TJ Raptor]

Nerdologist

TJ Raptor

Can rectangles be squares? Yes, but only those with attributes expected of a square.

Interesting analogy. However, all squares are rectangles; not all scientists are Christians. razz

Just being picky for the sake of pickiness.

That's why I said the opposite; all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.

[Nerdologist]

TJ Raptor

Nerdologist

TJ Raptor

Can rectangles be squares? Yes, but only those with attributes expected of a square.

Interesting analogy. However, all squares are rectangles; not all scientists are Christians. razz

Just being picky for the sake of pickiness.

That's why I said the opposite; all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.

If your analogy were a perfect parallel to the topic at hand, it would be true that all scientists are Christians, but not all Christians are scientists. I'll let you decide whether that's true or false for yourself. Truth is subjective, after all.

[TJ Raptor]

Nerdologist

TJ Raptor

Nerdologist

TJ Raptor

Can rectangles be squares? Yes, but only those with attributes expected of a square.

Interesting analogy. However, all squares are rectangles; not all scientists are Christians. razz

Just being picky for the sake of pickiness.

That's why I said the opposite; all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.

If your analogy were a perfect parallel to the topic at hand, it would be true that all scientists are Christians, but not all Christians are scientists. I'll let you decide whether that's true or false for yourself. Truth is subjective, after all.

razz — Touché. A fair point. I suppose it isn't a perfect parallel, but it fits if you don't look too deeply into it.

[Arcoon Effox]

The_Creation_Center

...Not only I love science, but biology, archeology, geology, meteorology, and astronomy.

I find this ironic not only for the reason that Nerdologist pointed out, but also that you have to blatantly ignore all these branches of science (and more) to believe in Young Earth Creationism:

Physics

Astronomy
Astrophysics - specifically things such as the speed of light, which generates the starlight problem. In order for the universe (YEC usually has the entire universe pop into existence, rather than just the planet) to be seen, either the speed of light has to be changing or light had to have started en route to Earth already. The former is not supported by modern science or any observational evidence, and even semi-coherent theories regarding an anisotropic synchrony convention or C-Decay can't account for the massive change needed. The latter is a case of special pleading and can lead to Last Thursdayism.

Electromagnetism - Since the speed of light can be derived from the vacuum permeability and the vacuum permittivity, unpredictable changes in speed of light pretty much renders the predictive power of the whole branch of electromagnetism to be thrown out of the window.

Cosmology - The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) - a background level of very cold, low frequency radiation, predicted to exist by the "Big Bang" model and discovered and researched intensively throughout the latter half of the 20th century.

General physics
* Mechanics - including Newtonian mechanics with gravity.
* Nuclear physics - the decay rates of certain isotopes are known and are used in radiometric dating. YEC beliefs often require these well established rates to change by, for lack of a better term, stuff.

Transport phenomena
* Fluid mechanics - momentum transfer is pretty much incompatible with the idea of a global flood.
* Heat transfer - pretty much incompatible with all the variations of ideas that require water under earth's crusts, or in case of radiative heat transfer, White hole cosmology and anything that involves different speed of light or radioactive meterial giving radiation at a significantly different rate.
* Mass transfer - also would have to be ignored, due to phenomena such as diffusion of impurities or crystal/sediment formation

Chemistry

Physical Chemistry
Reaction kinetics - the rate that amino acids undergo racemisation (conversion to an equal mix of stereoisomers) is a well known process that occurs at a specific rate. It can therefore be used as a dating method and has shown biological molecules to be far older than 6000 years.

Thermodynamics - All of the Laws of Thermodynamics are violated in a Creation event.

Materials Science
Tribology - The study of wear and friction in materials in relative motion to each other. The well-documented rates and mechanisms of wear and erosion preclude the rapid formation of geological features, such as the Grand Canyon, as claimed by young Earth creationists.

Biology

Well, nothing in biology is not evolutionary, which obviously contradicts YEC apologetics, but nevertheless:

General Biology
Botany - particularly Dendrochronology, which is considered not just accurate give or take a few years, but accurate to the year, as each layer of a tree represents one year. By overlapping patterns, dendrochronology clearly goes back tens of thousands of years at least, long before most YEC proponents say the universe even existed. (Some try to counter that trees can grow two rings in a year, which is true for some species on occasion, but other long-living species, like the bristlecone pine, are known to actually skip rings every once in a while. Even if we only had species that could occasionally grow extra rings, YEC would require a consistent rate of two to three rings per year since creation.)

Morphology

Zoology

Ecology

Medicine
Immunology - 'Nuff said.

Pharmacology- disease-causing bacteria and viruses mutate and become immune to our attempts at destroying or immunizing against them. This is one of the more powerful and very much real observations of evolution that supposedly doesn't happen in the YEC belief. See MRSA drug resistance.

Molecular biology
Genetics - the discovery of the genetic code was one of the biggest confirmations of evolution by natural selection, and went a great way to explain the empirical observations such as Mendel's Laws. The supposed dichotomy between "macroevolution" and "microevolution" can only exist if there are two forms of DNA, one that mutates and another that is immune from mutation - otherwise there is no barrier between the two. This is not borne out in observations.

Biochemistry - (Although Michael Behe begs to differ, he's not openly advocating young earth)

Mathematics

Trigonometry - disproves C-Decay.

Computer Science
* Cellular Automata applications - self-reproducing molecules are cellular automata which combine themselves using a few simple rules to cause emergent properties. If cellular automata (which are Turing-complete) are ignored, the entire corpus of computability theory has to be ignored.
* Evolutionary Computation - The theory of evolution is not reserved only to biological lifeforms. Just like how computers can simulate physics, chemistry, climate and other natural phenomena, they also can simulate evolutionary processes. By abstracting the principles of evolution, it's possible to "breed" efficient problem solving algorithms. There's an entire branch on artificial intelligence dedicated to study the optimization and learning applications of evolution. (Here's an example of the creation of a Tetris-playing code.)
* Time/Computational Complexity

Planetary Science

Geology
* Geomorphology - uplift causes mountain ranges to form, a process that can be observed to occur at a fixed rate.
* Plate tectonics - that tectonic plates are known to move at a certain rate, postulating that some pieces of land were one connected at some point - something observed and confirmed in the fossil record..
* Petrology - rocks and crystal structures that take considerably longer than 6000 years to form.
* Stratigraphy - rock layering through sedimentation; although creationists bizarrely like to attribute this to the Global Flood, even though a single event wouldn't explain layering.
* Vulcanology

Fossil Fuels - the estimated biomass required to form all the coal and oil underground suggest at least millions of years to accumulate it.

Meteorology

Palaeontology - self explanatory. There is a massive amount of evidence from palaeontology that only works and makes sense given a very, very old Earth.

Measurement

Metrology - Modern measurement defines distance based on speed of light and time based on radioactive decay; If radiometric dating and the starlight problem are invalid, one might as well throw out these definitions.

In addition to all these sciences, a YEC adherent must also ignore the several fields of Humanities research, such as archaeology, anthropology, history, and linguistics, as each of them indicate more than six thousand years of human history. For instance, the process of brewing beer is older than Creationists think the universe is.

(Source)

[Rumblestiltskin]

Arcoon Effox

The_Creation_Center

...Not only I love science, but biology, archeology, geology, meteorology, and astronomy.

I find this ironic not only for the reason that Nerdologist pointed out, but also that you have to blatantly ignore all these branches of science (and more) to believe in Young Earth Creationism:

Physics

Astronomy
Astrophysics - specifically things such as the speed of light, which generates the starlight problem. In order for the universe (YEC usually has the entire universe pop into existence, rather than just the planet) to be seen, either the speed of light has to be changing or light had to have started en route to Earth already. The former is not supported by modern science or any observational evidence, and even semi-coherent theories regarding an anisotropic synchrony convention or C-Decay can't account for the massive change needed. The latter is a case of special pleading and can lead to Last Thursdayism.

Electromagnetism - Since the speed of light can be derived from the vacuum permeability and the vacuum permittivity, unpredictable changes in speed of light pretty much renders the predictive power of the whole branch of electromagnetism to be thrown out of the window.

Cosmology - The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) - a background level of very cold, low frequency radiation, predicted to exist by the "Big Bang" model and discovered and researched intensively throughout the latter half of the 20th century.

General physics
* Mechanics - including Newtonian mechanics with gravity.
* Nuclear physics - the decay rates of certain isotopes are known and are used in radiometric dating. YEC beliefs often require these well established rates to change by, for lack of a better term, stuff.

Transport phenomena
* Fluid mechanics - momentum transfer is pretty much incompatible with the idea of a global flood.
* Heat transfer - pretty much incompatible with all the variations of ideas that require water under earth's crusts, or in case of radiative heat transfer, White hole cosmology and anything that involves different speed of light or radioactive meterial giving radiation at a significantly different rate.
* Mass transfer - also would have to be ignored, due to phenomena such as diffusion of impurities or crystal/sediment formation

Chemistry

Physical Chemistry
Reaction kinetics - the rate that amino acids undergo racemisation (conversion to an equal mix of stereoisomers) is a well known process that occurs at a specific rate. It can therefore be used as a dating method and has shown biological molecules to be far older than 6000 years.

Thermodynamics - All of the Laws of Thermodynamics are violated in a Creation event.

Materials Science
Tribology - The study of wear and friction in materials in relative motion to each other. The well-documented rates and mechanisms of wear and erosion preclude the rapid formation of geological features, such as the Grand Canyon, as claimed by young Earth creationists.

Biology

Well, nothing in biology is not evolutionary, which obviously contradicts YEC apologetics, but nevertheless:

General Biology
Botany - particularly Dendrochronology, which is considered not just accurate give or take a few years, but accurate to the year, as each layer of a tree represents one year. By overlapping patterns, dendrochronology clearly goes back tens of thousands of years at least, long before most YEC proponents say the universe even existed. (Some try to counter that trees can grow two rings in a year, which is true for some species on occasion, but other long-living species, like the bristlecone pine, are known to actually skip rings every once in a while. Even if we only had species that could occasionally grow extra rings, YEC would require a consistent rate of two to three rings per year since creation.)

Morphology

Zoology

Ecology

Medicine
Immunology

Pharmacology- disease-causing bacteria and viruses mutate and become immune to our attempts at destroying or immunizing against them. This is one of the more powerful and very much real observations of evolution that supposedly doesn't happen in the YEC belief. See MRSA drug resistance.

Molecular biology
Genetics - the discovery of the genetic code was one of the biggest confirmations of evolution by natural selection, and went a great way to explain the empirical observations such as Mendel's Laws. The supposed dichotomy between "macroevolution" and "microevolution" can only exist if there are two forms of DNA, one that mutates and another that is immune from mutation - otherwise there is no barrier between the two. This is not borne out in observations.

Biochemistry - (Although Michael Behe begs to differ, he's not openly advocating young earth)

Mathematics

Trigonometry - disproves C-Decay.

Computer Science
* Cellular Automata applications - self-reproducing molecules are cellular automata which combine themselves using a few simple rules to cause emergent properties. If cellular automata (which are Turing-complete) are ignored, the entire corpus of computability theory has to be ignored.
* Evolutionary Computation - The theory of evolution is not reserved only to biological lifeforms. Just like how computers can simulate physics, chemistry, climate and other natural phenomena, they also can simulate evolutionary processes. By abstracting the principles of evolution, it's possible to "breed" efficient problem solving algorithms. There's an entire branch on artificial intelligence dedicated to study the optimization and learning applications of evolution. (Here's an example of the creation of a Tetris-playing code.)

Time/Computational Complexity

Planetary Science

Geology
* Geomorphology - uplift causes mountain ranges to form, a process that can be observed to occur at a fixed rate.
* Plate tectonics - that tectonic plates are known to move at a certain rate, postulating that some pieces of land were one connected at some point - something observed and confirmed in the fossil record..
* Petrology - rocks and crystal structures that take considerably longer than 6000 years to form.
* Stratigraphy - rock layering through sedimentation; although creationists bizarrely like to attribute this to the Global Flood, even though a single event wouldn't explain layering.
* Vulcanology

Fossil Fuels - the estimated biomass required to form all the coal and oil underground suggest at least millions of years to accumulate it.

Meteorology

Palaeontology - self explanatory. There is a massive amount of evidence from palaeontology that only works and makes sense given a very, very old Earth.

Measurement

Metrology - Modern measurement defines distance based on speed of light and time based on radioactive decay; If radiometric dating and the starlight problem are invalid, one might as well throw out these definitions.

In addition to all these sciences, a YEC adherent must also ignore the several fields of Humanities research, such as archaeology, anthropology, history, and linguistics, as each of them indicate more than six thousand years of human history. For instance, the process of brewing beer is older than Creationists think the universe is.

(Source)

If "beer history" isn't the final nail in the coffin of this argument, then I don't know what is...cause you can't argue against alcohol.

[Arcoon Effox]

Rumblestiltskin

Arcoon Effox

... the process of brewing beer is older than Creationists think the universe is.

If "beer history" isn't the final nail in the coffin of this argument, then I don't know what is...cause you can't argue against alcohol.

"In vino veritas", indeed.

[Lightning the Lulu]

Rumblestiltskin

Arcoon Effox

The_Creation_Center

...Not only I love science, but biology, archeology, geology, meteorology, and astronomy.

I find this ironic not only for the reason that Nerdologist pointed out, but also that you have to blatantly ignore all these branches of science (and more) to believe in Young Earth Creationism:

Physics

Astronomy
Astrophysics - specifically things such as the speed of light, which generates the starlight problem. In order for the universe (YEC usually has the entire universe pop into existence, rather than just the planet) to be seen, either the speed of light has to be changing or light had to have started en route to Earth already. The former is not supported by modern science or any observational evidence, and even semi-coherent theories regarding an anisotropic synchrony convention or C-Decay can't account for the massive change needed. The latter is a case of special pleading and can lead to Last Thursdayism.

Electromagnetism - Since the speed of light can be derived from the vacuum permeability and the vacuum permittivity, unpredictable changes in speed of light pretty much renders the predictive power of the whole branch of electromagnetism to be thrown out of the window.

Cosmology - The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) - a background level of very cold, low frequency radiation, predicted to exist by the "Big Bang" model and discovered and researched intensively throughout the latter half of the 20th century.

General physics
* Mechanics - including Newtonian mechanics with gravity.
* Nuclear physics - the decay rates of certain isotopes are known and are used in radiometric dating. YEC beliefs often require these well established rates to change by, for lack of a better term, stuff.

Transport phenomena
* Fluid mechanics - momentum transfer is pretty much incompatible with the idea of a global flood.
* Heat transfer - pretty much incompatible with all the variations of ideas that require water under earth's crusts, or in case of radiative heat transfer, White hole cosmology and anything that involves different speed of light or radioactive meterial giving radiation at a significantly different rate.
* Mass transfer - also would have to be ignored, due to phenomena such as diffusion of impurities or crystal/sediment formation

Chemistry

Physical Chemistry
Reaction kinetics - the rate that amino acids undergo racemisation (conversion to an equal mix of stereoisomers) is a well known process that occurs at a specific rate. It can therefore be used as a dating method and has shown biological molecules to be far older than 6000 years.

Thermodynamics - All of the Laws of Thermodynamics are violated in a Creation event.

Materials Science
Tribology - The study of wear and friction in materials in relative motion to each other. The well-documented rates and mechanisms of wear and erosion preclude the rapid formation of geological features, such as the Grand Canyon, as claimed by young Earth creationists.

Biology

Well, nothing in biology is not evolutionary, which obviously contradicts YEC apologetics, but nevertheless:

General Biology
Botany - particularly Dendrochronology, which is considered not just accurate give or take a few years, but accurate to the year, as each layer of a tree represents one year. By overlapping patterns, dendrochronology clearly goes back tens of thousands of years at least, long before most YEC proponents say the universe even existed. (Some try to counter that trees can grow two rings in a year, which is true for some species on occasion, but other long-living species, like the bristlecone pine, are known to actually skip rings every once in a while. Even if we only had species that could occasionally grow extra rings, YEC would require a consistent rate of two to three rings per year since creation.)

Morphology

Zoology

Ecology

Medicine
Immunology

Pharmacology- disease-causing bacteria and viruses mutate and become immune to our attempts at destroying or immunizing against them. This is one of the more powerful and very much real observations of evolution that supposedly doesn't happen in the YEC belief. See MRSA drug resistance.

Molecular biology
Genetics - the discovery of the genetic code was one of the biggest confirmations of evolution by natural selection, and went a great way to explain the empirical observations such as Mendel's Laws. The supposed dichotomy between "macroevolution" and "microevolution" can only exist if there are two forms of DNA, one that mutates and another that is immune from mutation - otherwise there is no barrier between the two. This is not borne out in observations.

Biochemistry - (Although Michael Behe begs to differ, he's not openly advocating young earth)

Mathematics

Trigonometry - disproves C-Decay.

Computer Science
* Cellular Automata applications - self-reproducing molecules are cellular automata which combine themselves using a few simple rules to cause emergent properties. If cellular automata (which are Turing-complete) are ignored, the entire corpus of computability theory has to be ignored.
* Evolutionary Computation - The theory of evolution is not reserved only to biological lifeforms. Just like how computers can simulate physics, chemistry, climate and other natural phenomena, they also can simulate evolutionary processes. By abstracting the principles of evolution, it's possible to "breed" efficient problem solving algorithms. There's an entire branch on artificial intelligence dedicated to study the optimization and learning applications of evolution. (Here's an example of the creation of a Tetris-playing code.)

Time/Computational Complexity

Planetary Science

Geology
* Geomorphology - uplift causes mountain ranges to form, a process that can be observed to occur at a fixed rate.
* Plate tectonics - that tectonic plates are known to move at a certain rate, postulating that some pieces of land were one connected at some point - something observed and confirmed in the fossil record..
* Petrology - rocks and crystal structures that take considerably longer than 6000 years to form.
* Stratigraphy - rock layering through sedimentation; although creationists bizarrely like to attribute this to the Global Flood, even though a single event wouldn't explain layering.
* Vulcanology

Fossil Fuels - the estimated biomass required to form all the coal and oil underground suggest at least millions of years to accumulate it.

Meteorology

Palaeontology - self explanatory. There is a massive amount of evidence from palaeontology that only works and makes sense given a very, very old Earth.

Measurement

Metrology - Modern measurement defines distance based on speed of light and time based on radioactive decay; If radiometric dating and the starlight problem are invalid, one might as well throw out these definitions.

In addition to all these sciences, a YEC adherent must also ignore the several fields of Humanities research, such as archaeology, anthropology, history, and linguistics, as each of them indicate more than six thousand years of human history. For instance, the process of brewing beer is older than Creationists think the universe is.

(Source)

If "beer history" isn't the final nail in the coffin of this argument, then I don't know what is...cause you can't argue against alcohol.

If not, we could always throw in the fact that 6000 years ago was about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue. That ought to stick it. wink

[Rumblestiltskin]

The Legendary Guest

If not, we could always throw in the fact that 6000 years ago was about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue. That ought to stick it. wink

[adosohcohc]

yeah it aint against the religion to do science.
in fact, many of founding scientists were christian monks.
also catholic church have accept evolution no problem except this one freak a** s**t from my home town who idiot and go round preach creationism to everyone.
but for the most part