09-01-2006, 04:47 PM
Quote:He seriously thought the earth was only around 6000 years old. Phenomena like the Grand Canyon he explained with actions of God, and the layer structure and dinosaur bones were 'other things'. Carbon dating was not correct because the earths magnetic field would swith polarity once in a while.
So this guy was trying to use all kind of scientific 'proofs' (that made no sense) that would make his belief correct.
I worked with a fundie who thought similarly. I had another coworker who used to dig at him.
(Coworker) So God put the dinosaurs in the earth's crust just to trick us into thinking the earth is incredibly old?
(Fundie) No. They just lived a long time ago, back when Noah was alive.
(Coworker) And the Bible says Noah lived until he was 900 years old. Do you believe that, too?
(Fundie) Life was different in those days. We don't know why people lived so much longer back then.
(Coworker) And dinosaur bones turned to rock in just a few thousand years? Do you realize how long it takes for something to petrify? To turn into ROCK?
(Fundie) The environmental conditions at the time ...
Before a recent change of jobs, for the past two years Fundie had been teaching science in a private school. And they used creationism "science" books with exciting chapter headings like "Evolution: The Great Myth of Man." Great way to prepare kids for interacting with the scientific community in university. But then... this is Alabama. Even in the university biol class I took, the prof took great pains to disclaimer evolution and gently inform students they were free not to believe it, or that they could believe it without it interfering with their belief in God (big-G, not little-g), but whatever they did, they'd need to be able to answer questions about it for the test. Makes me damn happy the Bible doesn't make people #$%& their shorts at the mention of Riemann Hypothesis and Poincare Conjecture.
Anyway, Fundie had a rather unique outlook on why the Bible is credible. He claimed that statistical analysis of the Bible was sufficient to support its claims. The argument is something like, "The probability that the different authors of the Bible, working independently, could have written the same thing is sufficiently low that the events they describe most likely happened." I don't know if when he says 'Bible' he means the Old Testament, New Testament, or both.
-Lemmy