So I don't know how to answer this.....
Posted on: February 16, 2007 - 4:27pm
Offline
So I don't know how to answer this.....
I'll admit it's a different way to argue...... and it's supported by something called The Law of Accelerating Returns... look it up on Wikipedia. But the Law of Accelerating Returns is no absolut rule or anything. So here it is:
I told a Chrisitan roughly 50% of our population believes the Universe came into existance 10,000 years ago. Sure you've heard that statistic before lol. So anyway he replied with
"acually i think about 12 thousand...its in the bible. it took god 6 days of work and 1 day of rest but a thousand years to us is a day to him so that seven thousand years plus all the years that we have been on the earth comes out to be about around 11, 12 thousand years."
How do I respond to that... I fell like I should know this but I don't.- Login to post comments
He is still wrong. Isotope tracking dates the Earth at 4.57 billion years old. So his error is off by about almost ten million percent. To get a sense of scale, this guy would believe that new york and LA are 7cm apart. It is not physically possible for the Earth to have been created 10,000 years ago, it would leave obvious signs in the atmospheric gas concetration, and none of us would be here. The earth would be a deadly, boiling desert as it takes a long time for the atmosphere to mature and the oceans to form.
An even worse error is saying the universe is ten thousand years old. If that were true it would just be a clump of ionized hydrogen.
This guy is an idiot.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Ok, well I follow you in some of it, but I don't get some of the other stuff. As far as the distance between LA and NY, I'm not sure how you got that connection. I'm guessing it has something to do with the breaking up/expansion of Pangea.
Sorry to bug ya, just trying to understand what I'm arguing lol.
I can't think of a single reason that accelerating change could allow for a young earth. There's lots of evidence the earth is orders of magnitude older then 6, 10, or 12 thousand years. Do you know any more about the argument and how accelerating change is supposed to be connected?
I guess I would ask why the Bible says 'days' if god didn't really mean 'days'.
It's only the fairy tales they believe.
I only used the LA/NY thing to help you imagine the scale of this guys error of the age of the universe.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
(I believe) It has to do with the degree of error.
10000 years as opposed to the understand that it is a couple hundred million years old. (or billions).
7cm, as opposed to the understanding that it is a couple miles wide.
7cm, as opposed to the understanding that it is a couple miles wide.
LA and NY are 2000 miles apart
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Heh.. sorry.. for some reason I read "distance between NY and LA" but answered as if I read "size of new york".
Multitasking is bad.
alright well as far as the Law of Accelerated Returns goes...
from what i remember it states [basically] "The more intelligent/aware a being/whatever is, the more time seems to slow down."
now, i would still say to that "Well in God's almighty wisdom, you would think he would have talked about things in 'human days', or in 'god days'. and not left it for interpretation."
Um, actually, speed perception is correlated to metabolic rate. So an insect will see the world far faster than we do.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Haha yeah I'm no expert here. Getting there tho : ]. But yeah, so tell me if I got this right. The bigger the organism is, the faster the metabolic rate will be. And the faster the metabolic rate, the quicker the world flies by them.
Close at least?Youve got it the wrong way around. Small organisms lose energy so fast they need a greatly speeded up metabolic rate.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Ah.. this is an interesting concept that I've always wondered about. I didn't know there theory concerning it.. my question was merely a passing fancy.
Specifically:
When I see a bonfire, the bonfire lasts for an hour or so before burning out the fuel (wood), which, relative to me is small.
Now, when I strike a match, the match lasts for only a few seconds or so before burning out the fuel (wood), which, relative me is much smaller than the bonfire.
Yet, to a grasshopper, the amount of fuel is relatively large, and the match would seem like a bonfire.
Now, in the same way that a bonfire lasts longer for me then a match, would a human match be perceived (to a grasshopper) to last longer then it does to me since the amount of fuel is relatively larger then it is for me.
Anyways.. heh, that was my question. Metabolic rates.. interesting. Of course, I'm not sure it can be verfied.. can it be?
Ah.. edit: Notice I didn't say.. "would it last more seconds, or minutes" or anything like that-- since those words have human restricted concepts apart from "individual perception".
My expertise on that kinda stops here. Im not an endocrinologist. I was going to become one, but I skipped out on it because in endocrinology there are only two things you say to a patient:
1 You're going to die
2 You have a disease which we have never seen before, and you're going to die.
So, it's a miserable field.
To answer your question, I suppose the grasshopper would percieve the match to be burning faster simply because it is burning energy much faster and therefore it's perception is much faster.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
So the rate of energy burning is propotional to the perception of time.
I would think that its inversely propotional.
Faster burning.. slower perception of time.
Kind of like the concept of time travel and the speed of light. Faster you move.. slower time is perceived.
Unless I'm misunderstanding the scientific concept.
This is not my area either... just fascinated by it.
I suppose the example I could use is cytokinines, which fortunately, happen to be part of my field. Cytokinins will in theory speed up metabolism because the class they belong to is a mitosis promoter. So they are hormonal chemicals that when bound to cellular receptors, promote cell division. Im theorizing here, but that would increase the rate of synaptogenesis and ion flux, so I guess it would speed perception.
Metabolic speed perception is pretty obscure, I cant find anything on it.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Nono.. I realize that speeding up metabolism speeds up the speed of actions (such as (how I understand) your example).
But this doesn't necessarily speak to perception of time. I understand however that you are theorizing.. so am I.
"Metabolic Speed Perception" would be a sweet thesis paper......... for something. I don't know what-- heh, I'm not planning on ever writing a thesis.
I will however, have to write lots of law papers. Humbug.
I agree. There should be more study into the subject. It would be a great thesis paper! it's sorta tricky though because perception is such a subjective word, it starts getting away from hard science into the strange world of physchological processing theory.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
The problem is that it's a bit ad hoc. I don't think it says anywhere in the bible that a 1000 years is like a day to god. The conversion was arbitrary. You might as well say that 2 billion years is a day to god, so the universe is 14 billion years old. If they say that that's "too much, well, god is supposed to be omnipotent, why should he have a set rate of passage of time?
(Take notes of who says what in case, at a later date, someone who claims that conversion tries to say that god is "outside time".)
If you point out radiation dating and/or fossils and he claims that god made the Earth look old when he made it, you could counter that they have no evidence that the Earth wasn't actually created last Thursday with the illusion of its current age.
Additionally, you could call into doubt the veracity of the Bible. Perhaps starting with little things like "rabbits don't chew cud", "insects don't have 4 legs", and "bats are not birds". These and others provide evidence that the book was written by ignorant people 2000 years ago.
-Triften
Alright, I think I'm set with info for a while here...lol.