Cardinal Pell and Evolution

[Subduction Zone]

All buildings share large amount of atoms, they must be related?

There is such a thing as a stupid question. Let me answer your question with another one: do buildings give birth to other buildings?

Right now you just told everyone that you know less about science than a third grade student. This explains how you can call your own god a liar and not understand how you do that.

 

[exchemist]

All buildings share large amount of atoms, they must be related?

Yes, if all else fails, deliberately miss the point. Brilliant.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

All buildings share large amount of atoms, they must be related?

DNA is different in kind to atoms. There is no relevance between them.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Sorry, I don't think that is true and I don't think they have proved their claims are true.

Sorry, that doesn't cut it. You don't get to ask for evidence and then just ignore it and hand wave it away.
You are ill equipped to have a conversation about something you do not know anything about. That's the bottom line here.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Please give some real observable difference, like for example different color, size....

Why should anyone provide anything to you that you're just going to ignore anyway?
Try being intellectually honest, and we'll talk. Otherwise, what's the point?

 

[SkepticThinker]

I believe it is only fiction in your eyes because you are blind.

Then prove us wrong. Should be easy.

 

[SkepticThinker]

"Reasonable doubt" sounds very solid. Then you must believe in God, because His existence is demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, according to many people.

But, how do you measure it, what is the point from where you take the measurement, is it not sea level? If it is sea level, how do you know it is constant? The whole measurement is relative, if you would decide it is the top of the mountain that is the fixed point, you would get different result and I think more reasonable result.

Take some science courses. Just because you don't understand something, doesn't mean others don't and it doesn't mean an explanation isn't available. There are people who spend their entire lives studying this stuff and taking great pains to show us their work and demonstrate their claims. Remember that before you brush it off so quickly as though it's nothing.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I don't believe they can measure it very accurately that way.

I see you're still offering yourself as a serious source of science and scientific opinion.

You never responded to my gesture to help you - not even a "No thank you, that's not for me." That's fine. Assuming that you read and understood what was written, you apparently prefer this experience to one where you aren't continually corrected. That's fine with me if it is with you.

All buildings share large amount of atoms, they must be related?

Yes, they are. And not just a large number of atoms, but the atoms on the periodic table - the alphabet of matter. The original source of atoms with four or more protons is stars. All such matter is related in this way through this common source and process, stellar nucleosynthesis.

Likewise with DNA and it's handful of monomeric elements (CTAG nucleotides, the alphabet of DNA). This is how we know that life comes from a single process and all living things are related. They also use the same elemental alphabet as the buildings, the moon, and every other material thing.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Thanks, do you have some source for that information?

I don't believe they can measure it very accurately that way.

Why not?

Do you have an actual reason?
Or is it just so that it doesn't fit your a priori beliefs?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

All buildings share large amount of atoms, they must be related?

That's a phenomenally ignorant thing to say.

 

[Audie]

Sorry, that doesn't cut it. You don't get to ask for evidence and then just ignore it and hand wave it away.
You are ill equipped to have a conversation about something you do not know anything about. That's the bottom line here.

When is God gonna send a creationist
who can do better than just saying things?

 

[1213]

Sorry, that doesn't cut it. You don't get to ask for evidence and then just ignore it and hand wave it away.

If there is not good reason to accept the evidence supports your claims, it is not useful.

 

[1213]

Yes, if all else fails, deliberately miss the point. Brilliant.

The point is, if there are similarities, it does not necessary mean it is because of same ancestry. It is as well possible God created everything with similar principles, which is why it may look like they are related.

 

[1213]

Here's the abstract of an admittedly now rather old (2007) technical article on the subject:

Abstract​

Over recent decades several modern geoinformatic height-finding methods have emerged, including global positioning system (GPS), interferometric radar, and airborne laser scanner (ALS) or lidar. In conjunction with the conventional survey and photogrammetric method, they have found wide applications that demand varying levels of accuracy. In this paper, the principles of each method are briefly summarized. The discussion then concentrates on the accuracy level achievable with each method. The factors that affect the accuracy, wherever possible, are comprehensively evaluated. This review has revealed that the highest accuracy achievable is still with the levelling method, followed by the photogrammetric method. This situation is likely to change in light of real-time kinematic GPS coupled with ALS. In contrast to the imaging methods that are suited to obtain highly accurate, fine-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) at a local scale, GPS is the most efficient at obtaining heights at spots or along lines accurately. ALS is the only method applicable to acquisition of subsurface heights in vegetated areas. These airborne methods are complementary to their space-borne counterparts, such as Shuttle Radar Topographic Mapping and Shuttle Laser Altimeter, both being ideal in obtaining DEMs at the regional and global scales. The synergistic use of GPS with lidar offers the best hope in obtaining cm-level accuracies essential for monitoring ground subsidence and tectonic uplift. Height measurements accurate to subcentimetres needed for national levelling surveys are possible only after the tropospheric path delay is externally calibrated using Raman lidar data during GPS data analysis.

From: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0309133307087084

Thank you! That is relatively good answer, all though I think it shows the method is not very accurate and it could be possible that it just looks like mountain rising, without it really being so, because things are relative.

 

[exchemist]

Thank you! That is relatively good answer, all though I think it shows the method is not very accurate and it could be possible that it just looks like mountain rising, without it really being so, because things are relative.

"Things are relative" is far too woolly to be acceptable reasoning in science. Measurement relative to the orbit of a satellite, which is fixed relative to the centre of the Earth, can be quite precise, down to centimetres. It is only when this is translated into height above some arbitrary datum level, such as sea level, or the surface of the geoid, that differing values can arise, due to uncertainties and variables in how those datum levels are themselves determined.

 

[exchemist]

The point is, if there are similarities, it does not necessary mean it is because of same ancestry. It is as well possible God created everything with similar principles, which is why it may look like they are related.

Oh I see. Yes, you can hypothesise that God could have made things look similar - humans with DNA more similar to a fish than to a banana, say, just as He could have put the fossils in the rocks to fool the palaeontologists and constructed layers of rock with different apparent radiometric ages, and magnetic stripes in the sea floor, to fool the physicists.

However science, which operates on the basis of seeking explanations of nature in nature itself, finds these things can be accounted for pretty well without needing to invoke supernatural tinkering. As the methodology of science has been highly successful to date, those of us with a science education place a fair degree of trust in its explanations. That does not rule out a creator, but it does suggest that if there is one he is not a tinkerer.

 

[Audie]

"Things are relative" is far too woolly to be acceptable reasoning in science. Measurement relative to the orbit of a satellite, which is fixed relative to the centre of the Earth, can be quite precise, down to centimetres. It is only when this is translated into height above some arbitrary datum level, such as sea level, or the surface of the geoid, that differing values can arise, due to uncertainties and variables in how those datum levels are themselves determined.

Actually the argument is always
" nobody is as smart as me"

 

[Colt]

For a long time I've been struggling with Genesis. I cannot accept the view that Adam and Eve are historical people and our first parents. Repeatedly I hear references to them in that way in sermons and discussions. I keep going back to a programme I saw from Australia where Cardinal Pell was asked for the view of the Catholic Church on Genesis. He quite plainly, described the book as allegorical. He went on to say that the Church now viewed evolution as the explanation for human origins. That also seems to be backed up by writings of Pope Benedict. So why, especially among Americans, is the literal interpretation put forward as doctrine?
I know that commentators argue that to ignore a literal Adam would mean that the death and resurrection of Jesus would be pointless and thus Christianity is rendered pointless too. But, is that really the case? Can we not accept that there are spiritual meanings to the Genesis stories and they were written long before Jesus. The sacrifice of Jesus doesn't have to have a direct link with the fall of the figurative Adam does it?
Apologies for the clumsiness of my points, you can tell that I'm not a theologian. I am however, someone who lost faith for over 50 years and for the last 10 keeps finding it again but then having doubts as described.
Any comments would be welcomed.

My religious beliefs are based on the Urantia Book revelation which reveals that there was an Adam and an Eve, 2 incarnate celestial beings from another world, but they arrived on a world that was evolved and long since populated. They were the replacement for the previous resident representative of God on earth who was caught up in the Lucifer rebellion. This Son and daughter of God were to be the worlds new spiritual rulers but in short order defaulted (but repented). The "Crafty Beast" (who never repented) was the previous fallen administrator who managed to outflank Eve and lead to a default.


When the Israelites were constructing their story of origins in Babylon, they appropriated Mesopotamian lore. They just assumed that Adam was the first man and that the world must have been created just prior to his appearance in history.

One should note that in the story of Adam, Cain leaves the garden but fears people out in the world becuse the world was already populated. The editors and authors of the Old Testament books failed to remove tell tail signs of what was there before.

Holy men are fallible, and they are NOT historians!

 

[SkepticThinker]

If there is not good reason to accept the evidence supports your claims, it is not useful.

There is good reason to accept scientific information versus unsupported stories from ancient books. Scientific claims are demonstrable and replicable and testable. Scientists show their work - you can read it and examine it for yourself. The scientific method is the single most reliable tool human beings have come up with to help provide us with reliable and accurate knowledge of the world we live in. That's the good reason you have to accept scientific evidence. And the fact that the computer you're typing on actually works. You can thank science for that.

 

[metis]

If there is not good reason to accept the evidence supports your claims, it is not useful.

And yet you offer 0 evidence and seemingly don't know the difference between "knowledge" and "belief".