Is Christianity alone in this?

[Tcg]

This is certainly not true of all Christians, but there is a subset that rejects the findings of science because they perceive that in some cases these findings conflict with a literal reading of scripture. The age of the earth is a good example. Some claim it is around 6,000 years old. Scientific calculations place it at around 4.5 billion. Evolution is another scientific finding that often gets rejected because it seemingly conflicts with the Genesis story of creation.

Are there other religions that have a subset of its followers who reject scientific findings or is Christianity alone in this?


Tcg

[Wootah]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #30]

I am a creationist, I think yom means day. It is still debatable whether the creation story is true as symbolism or true as fact and symbolism. I find it deeply true. As in ignoring that at our peril true. There are facts that can go towards old ages obviously and also facts that go towards young ages.

This is a site I like for looking at bible contradictions. https://www.contradictingbiblecontradictions.com/?p=244

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #30]

I am a creationist, I think yom means day. It is still debatable whether the creation story is true as symbolism or true as fact and symbolism. I find it deeply true. As in ignoring that at our peril true. There are facts that can go towards old ages obviously and also facts that go towards young ages.

This is a site I like for looking at bible contradictions. https://www.contradictingbiblecontradictions.com/?p=244

You can make Yom mean whatever you like, but what it does not mean is 14+ billion years divided by 7. Because what's in Geneis is described as days with sunrise and sunsets, 24 hours, just as they are now.

On all the evidence, it was not all made in just 6 of those days and on the evidence, again, cannot be either factually or symbolically true.

And the only peril I see here is in buying into the anti -scientific propaganda of Genesis literalism, creationism and religious fundamentalism. Evidence and reason is a better bet for anyone who cares about what's true, as distinct from what's "True" (believed on Faith) whatever age they may be.

[We_Are_VENOM]

I know you will deny all the evidence

I accept convincing evidence.

, but the point about morning and evening is to show that those who try to reconcile a universe 14 billion years old with 7 days are contradicted by the Bible itself. Not everyone can airily dismiss all the science, out of hand.

And YEC have are of the opinion that one need not assume the universe is 14 billion years old.

Once that assumption disappears, then so does any contradiction or the need to reconcile anything.

Now the date of the universe is based on Hubble's constant. I'm useless at math but I gather that working out the formulae of Light, matter and time gives us a date for the universe. You may reject this as you reject the rest of the science.

What does Hubble's constant tell us?

The age of the earth is based on more science, Argon and potassium dating and various other methods. RATE did their best to debunk the dating but couldn't. If you reject the age of the earth you are dismissing science that even the Creationist thinktank couldn't.
The hilarious thing O Venomous one, is that even if Evolution could be disproved, that would not do a thing to prove a god.

[TRANSPONDER]

I know you will deny all the evidence

I accept convincing evidence.

, but the point about morning and evening is to show that those who try to reconcile a universe 14 billion years old with 7 days are contradicted by the Bible itself. Not everyone can airily dismiss all the science, out of hand.

And YEC have are of the opinion that one need not assume the universe is 14 billion years old.

Once that assumption disappears, then so does any contradiction or the need to reconcile anything.

Now the date of the universe is based on Hubble's constant. I'm useless at math but I gather that working out the formulae of Light, matter and time gives us a date for the universe. You may reject this as you reject the rest of the science.

What does Hubble's constant tell us?

The age of the earth is based on more science, Argon and potassium dating and various other methods. RATE did their best to debunk the dating but couldn't. If you reject the age of the earth you are dismissing science that even the Creationist thinktank couldn't.
The hilarious thing O Venomous one, is that even if Evolution could be disproved, that would not do a thing to prove a god.

I understand that denial of the universe being 14.5 billion years old would resolve the 7 days problem (though not why light and dark was created before the sun), but the point was about those who DO accept a 14.5 billion year old universe but try to make it fit the Bible by dividing the age of the universe by 7. Which is denied by Genesis because it is talking of days with morning and evening. Now I did watch an explanation of how Hubble's constant can be used to calculate the age of the universe, but don't look to me to explain it. I'm sure it can be found online and I may try to find a quick summary to post. Though as I said, I expect it will just be dismissed as any science that contradicts the Bible is dismissed.

[TRANSPONDER]

I had a look and some are better than others. One was very good but the presenter had an accent to dense I could hardly understand him. Others tended to emphasise the Other method - of using red shit and distance of stars to estimate the age.

There are also Qora questions. There are cooler and more entertaining videos but this might do.

Now I can anticipate the objection - why should we assume constant rate of expansion? Answer - why should we not? Physics says that wen you fire a bullet at a target, the bullet will not slow down and speed up. So constant rate of expansion, like most of these Constants is the favoured model.


Of course this date may be open to revision, especially with the discovery of a star that appears to be older than the age of the universe But what I don't expect it to show is that it is just a few thousand years old. Even radiometric dating of the earth shows that earth is older than that. I believe there are even decent radiocarbon dates older than a few tens of thousands of years. All the evidence is against YE and none that I know of is for Genesis.

[Difflugia]

Others tended to emphasise the Other method - of using red [Expletive deleted] and distance of stars to estimate the age.

I know that's a typo, but the mental image is hilarious.

[benchwarmer]

I know you will deny all the evidence

I accept convincing evidence.

My preference is for convincing and verifiable evidence. Anything that aligns with my preexisting biases will likely always be convincing, but if it's verifiable I feel much better standing on that.

I know for a fact that based on previous debate topics you do NOT accept some verifiable evidence, but are happy to remain convinced by whatever preexisting evidence you think you have.

Since you will likely ask: How many steps will it take to reach X if you only step 1/2 the distance remaining to X from your current position at each step? I don't bring this up to reopen a debate, only to show that basic math verifies my position (infinite) and ignoring it convinces you (some finite number that isn't infinite).

Based on this, it basically means anything we present will remain unconvincing to you. Honestly, that's fine. Readers will decide in a debate what is convincing and what isn't. If they can verify it themselves, I don't need to do anything else.

[benchwarmer]

Others tended to emphasise the Other method - of using red [Expletive deleted] and distance of stars to estimate the age.

I know that's a typo, but the mental image is hilarious.

That really shows how our brains work (at least mine). I never even noticed that typo. I tend to miss things like this all the time, especially in my own writing. I guess my brain is super lazy and just stops really reading once it thinks it knows what words are there.

Anyways, sorry for the off topic musing. It really is funny now that I reread it.

Maybe back on topic: It's so easy to interpret writings how we are biased and used to reading them. Are Christians alone in this? Clearly not.... I fall into it as just shown.

[Tcg]

Maybe back on topic: It's so easy to interpret writings how we are biased and used to reading them. Are Christians alone in this? Clearly not.... I fall into it as just shown.

The question I asked in the O.P. is about a more specific situation than that. I stated in part, "This is certainly not true of all Christians, but there is a subset that rejects the findings of science because they perceive that in some cases these findings conflict with a literal reading of scripture." This phenomenon is what I wondered if Christianity is alone in.

So far it has been reported that this is also true of some Orthodox Jews and some Muslims. Unless I've overlooked it, no other religions have been mentioned. I don't know a great deal about either Hinduism or Buddhism for instance, but I wonder if they or other religions have some subset of adherents that reject some scientific findings because they conflict with their religion's teachings. Perhaps there are no others and perhaps the reason is that those teachings don't conflict with science.


Tcg

[TRANSPONDER]

Others tended to emphasise the Other method - of using red [Expletive deleted] and distance of stars to estimate the age.

I know that's a typo, but the mental image is hilarious.

That really shows how our brains work (at least mine). I never even noticed that typo. I tend to miss things like this all the time, especially in my own writing. I guess my brain is super lazy and just stops really reading once it thinks it knows what words are there.

Anyways, sorry for the off topic musing. It really is funny now that I reread it.

Maybe back on topic: It's so easy to interpret writings how we are biased and used to reading them. Are Christians alone in this? Clearly not.... I fall into it as just shown.

Sorry about that. A typo I missed. My eyes don't get any better and the font's so damn' tiny. And it's ok to mentally correct errors from the context. We are pretty skilled critters in doing that. And we are off topic and yet again being asked to defend 'Evilooshun', the obsession of American Creationists it seems.

I know you will deny all the evidence

I accept convincing evidence.

My preference is for convincing and verifiable evidence. Anything that aligns with my preexisting biases will likely always be convincing, but if it's verifiable I feel much better standing on that.

I know for a fact that based on previous debate topics you do NOT accept some verifiable evidence, but are happy to remain convinced by whatever preexisting evidence you think you have.

Since you will likely ask: How many steps will it take to reach X if you only step 1/2 the distance remaining to X from your current position at each step? I don't bring this up to reopen a debate, only to show that basic math verifies my position (infinite) and ignoring it convinces you (some finite number that isn't infinite).

Based on this, it basically means anything we present will remain unconvincing to you. Honestly, that's fine. Readers will decide in a debate what is convincing and what isn't. If they can verify it themselves, I don't need to do anything else.

'What is convincing evidence going to be? We can provide dating methods that makes it clear that the YE model is not supported by evidence. But they will not accept it. I'd bet that right now Venom is off trawling the Creationist sites looking for reasons to dismiss science. It's not hard. I already mentioned a couple of things - the date of 13,5 billion years is now 14.5 Billion. The Methuselah star raises more questions about that and the uniformity assumption can be questioned, though on what grounds I know not - God doesn't muck about with physics and when He does, like the switching of the magnetic poles we just say 'There's probably a good scientific explanation that will turn up some day.' It must drive them mad.

Hang on though - Creationism WAS the topic. for once. Any why? Radiometric dating of rocks by several methods knocks that on the head. RATE was set up as a Creationist Thinktank to try to discredit the methods, but it failed. C14 isn't the method here as it only works on organic materials - it doesn't date stone. And organic material decays so it's tough to date the oldest fossils, and the problem of contamination is a real one, but it is handy to date stuff to get a ballpark confirmation and is great for wood or bone tends of thousands of years old where before we could only guess. But for millions years old material like coal, the decay of C14 is so much that even mild contamination can mess up the dating.

And the misconceptions! The misuse of 'The Cambrian Explosion' as supposedly a Genesis - type event with all the 'Kinds' appearing at once. It is just that clusters of cells in ribbon or disc form evolved into molluscs and crustaceans and even the early fish. The basics of all the eventual species, but hardly all species in a short time. You'd think the evidence of evolution through the fossil sequence in strata would be convincing, but they come up with daft scenarios like the more advanced critters being able to outrun the Flood waters. Like a veloceraptor is faster than a giant sloth so should be in 'later' strata, but never is. ..but as usual it isn't about what's going to convince them or what unanswerable questions are going to make us doubt the 'interpretation of the evidence'. It's about how it looks to the browsers. And they are the people who matter and getting the wider audience.