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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[origamiscienceguy]

Well maybe the earth looks flat to God.

[Rolepgeek]

Young Earth Creationists are not the only type of literalist, as far as I know.

I believe the response would be 'yes. Your point?'

Or, no, stronger, because the bible practically says the earth is flat, even square, but the specific age thing is just calculations by some dude.

Also, genesis is weird anyway, and interpreting God making the Universe is not really something we can do even if it's a secular creation of the universe. Like, seriously, we're basically making guesses based on theories we think should probably sorta get the results we expect.

And Frumple, I mean things like mathematics. That's not experimental, and if you define science as being experimental, then no it's not science. But it's like computer sciences. As far as I know, they don't really do experiments of that vein. They might run theorems through to see when and how they do or do not work but...

Also, origami makes a good point. Kinda like this.

[Fenrir]

Laptisen seems to be ignoring 100s of years of sophisticated apologetics that attempt to use logic to support religion.

No, religious people ignore them too.

Uh, yeah, no. Plenty of religious people take apologetics seriously. And his assertion was that religion is based on the assumption that the universe doesn’t behave in a way you can model with logic. The existance of apologetics shows that to be false.

[origamiscienceguy]

Well that makes sense I guess. God would be the master of all dimensions (however many there are).

[Rose]

Fun fact: Vedic estimates of the age of the universe put it at about 11,000 times as old as current scientific estimates.

[Orange Wizard]

Besides, doesn't the Bible say the earth and Universe were both created at the same time?

You tell me, I can't tell.

1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

"The heavens" could be, what, sky? The actual heavenly realm of God? Where did the water come from? No timeframe is given until the first day, either.

[Fenrir]

Well maybe the earth looks flat to God.

Also, origami makes a good point. Kinda like this.

Well that makes sense I guess. God would be the master of all dimensions (however many there are).

Wait, you were serious? So God got confused and wrote that the Earth has corners and a foundation because “Hey, all those lower dimensions look the same to me.”?

The mistake doesn’t even have anything to do with the number of dimensions. Even if God was hyper-dimensional the earth would still be a sphere and have no fucking corners.

[Adragis]

Pretty sure 'corners of the earth' isn't a literal thing. I'm about 60% sure it has something to do with the cardinal directions.

[Sheb]

Neither of those two things work like that. There's experimental sciences and then there's... stuff that's not science,* even if there can be a lot of non-experimental work involved in the former.

Well, actually, non-experimental sciences are a things, they're the sciences where you can't perform experiments, for example because you're studying historical processes and cannot go back in time. Astronomy, much of evolution, or history comes to mind.

[MonkeyHead]

Neither of those two things work like that. There's experimental sciences and then there's... stuff that's not science,* even if there can be a lot of non-experimental work involved in the former.

Well, actually, non-experimental sciences are a things, they're the sciences where you can't perform experiments, for example because you're studying historical processes and cannot go back in time. Astronomy, much of evolution, or history comes to mind.

Or theoretical physics for example, which when engineering caches up, has a pretty good track record of being experimentally correct.

[Sheb]

Although on the subject of evolution, I remember a German prof who came to give us a seminar on the origin of life and started his talk by saying "First of all, this is speculation, no science, because even if I could create life in a test tube, that's not guarantee that life on earth started that way all that time ago".

[Leafsnail]

The difference between scientific theories and the ideas that modern apologetics have arrived at is testable predictions. Scientific theories describe the world, and thus can at least in theory be proved wrong experimentally. One example would be General Relativity - even though it seems very theoretical it has made a tonne of predictions that have turned out to be correct (the earliest one being the prediction that light will bend around the sun).

There is no possible test that would disprove modern biblical interpretations. This means you can't demonstrate it's wrong, but at the same time it means it doesn't descrobibe the real world in any meaningful sense. I don't see the relevance of it, or why you should beleve it over any  other unfalsifiable theory.

[Sheb]

What? No, there are testable predictions too. I mean, people had to change their interpretation of stuff like Genesis when evolution came around and so on.

[Leafsnail]

Sure, literalist interpretations of the Bible make testable predictions (that are wrong). I'm referring to the more modern ones where God is outside the universe and doesn't interact with reality.

I guess you can also duck and weave around evidence as it comes up but you aren't really making any predictions at that point  - there is no possible evidence that would challenge your core idea that 'god exists'.

e: this is the general sense of 'you', I don't know if you hold this view

[Graknorke]

What? No, there are testable predictions too. I mean, people had to change their interpretation of stuff like Genesis when evolution came around and so on.

There is no possible test that would disprove modern biblical interpretations.

Right now it's been refined into pretty much the pinnacle of unfalsifiability.