There are some hilarious religious casts in Skypeland. One I heard included someone who claimed that DNA evidence shows that Jesus is God. So I asked him about this. The person quickly back pedalled and said that the DNA of Jesus that we have we cannot compare to anything. However, he claims that DNA evidence shows that the Noah's Ark account is historically accurate. A friend who pursued this further was sent to a video of 2 hour fire-and-brimstone sermon that supposedly contained this "proof", but there was apparently not a whisper of discussion of DNA in the video.
Clearly they use these sorts of arguments to lure in the gullible who do not even know enough to question these claims. It is actually pretty dishonest, deceitful and unChristian, frankly. When someone asks them anything about these claims, one of the first responses is to attack the person asking as a filthy atheist. It is pretty comical really.
It was then claimed that Muslims go against this DNA evidence to say that Jesus did not exist. A Muslim in the cast angrily disputed this, and argued that Muslims are superior to Christians because they do not need DNA evidence to know that Jesus existed, since they have proof, and that proof is that they have faith. This makes Muslims superior of course. This erupted into a huge argument, as might be expected.
Then they asked me if I had more questions. Against my better judgement, I decided to ask another question; "Did they have the DNA of Jesus?" They did not, they said.
Then I was attacked for being against creationism and claiming the world was older than 10,000 years. I asked, since over 99.9% of all scientists in the relevant fields disagree with that, what is wrong with these scientists? Are they all atheists? Are they all evil? Working for the devil? Stupid?
And one of them, a lecturer in computer science at the University of Calgary with a master's degree (who has got into trouble for his "creationist" activities at work, and who is unable to make any coherent scientific arguments) claimed to be a scientist (computer scientists are NOT regarded as scientists) from the University of Alberta (which is marginally more prestigious in Alberta, so I guess that is why he said that). This computer scientist said he was a scientist who disagreed with an old earth interpretation of the evidence. And then he and the host told me that this person with a masters in computer science knew more science than me. I have had previous conversations with him; he knows almost nothing about science. Wow. What arrogance based on ignorance.
He threw out the standard "depth of moondust" argument to claim the earth was less than 10,000 years old. This argument has been roundly dismissed decades ago, of course:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/moon-dust.html
I get irritated with these people who, based on no evidence, want to dictate to science, and to God, if he exists, the details of how creation came about. They presume to know more than all the rest of us, and centuries worth of scientists numbering in the millions, and to be able to dispute what the evidence is and reject it based on blind faith.
I dislike these scientific illiterates setting themselves up on a pedestal and speaking for God himself, which is what they love to do. I asked them to have some humility and not effectively spit in God's face by dictating terms to him constantly. Incredible conceit...This makes them furious of course.
I asked about the rings in the coral, which go back many many millions of years like the tree rings do. They never have a good answer for that. And of course they didn't in this case, and just wanted to shout me down. So I left...
The standard answer to how the earth can be only 10,000 years old and have millions of years worth of coral rings is that God made the earth appear old (when it is really young) to test our faith, or the Devil made the earth appear old to trick us, or something like that. These are called omphalos hypotheses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_(theology)
but from past conversations, I knew that this computer scientist did not even know his own field well enough to make any of the standard creationist rebuttals. His depth of knowledge is incredibly shallow, even when it comes to creationism. He just enjoys pretending to be speaking for God. I have met a few like that over my life...what a strange obsession.
Friday, September 7, 2007
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