• Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    I’m not siding with the 4000 year old earth argument, but that is a weak counterargument.

    Lead was created by dying stars that long predate the Earth.

  • hope@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Not to argue for creationism, but this argument sucks. Lead can be produced by supernova, not just through decay of heavier elements. But even that’s besides the point, since if you believe some entity created the universe, surely said entity could have created whatever ratio of lead to uranium they wanted. It’s not a falsifiable claim, there’s really no disproving it, unfortunately.

    (Not so fun fact: the environmental impact of leaded gasoline was discovered by trying to estimate the age of the earth using the radio of lead to uranium in uranium deposits, but the pollution from leaded gasoline was throwing the measurements off.)

    • wise_pancake@lemmy.ca
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      6 days ago

      Also this doesn’t say anything about the Earth.

      Plus you can give a liberal reading of the bible to be:

      1. god created the heaven and the earth. God created the heavenly bodies.
      2. God created the sky - earths atmosphere and climate
      3. God separates oceans - creates continental forms, and plant based life
      4. God creates the moon and sun and stars. This one seems out of order to me… maybe just the earth and solar system stabilize. I don’t know how plants exist without the sun, so maybe it’s microbes or something.
      5. God creates birds and sea creatures. Maybe birds are dinosaurs.
      6. God creates modern land animals, then creates man and woman. That makes sense, mankind is certainly new with only a few hundred thousand years of records before civilization starts.

      That doesn’t have to imply the earth is 4000 years old. Even the original wording could be read as eon instead of day.

      • krashmo@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        The Bible is a couple thousand chapters long. The creation story is the first two chapters. It’s pretty obviously only attempting to establish that God created the universe in some ambiguous way and move on with the story. That doesn’t stop people from inferring all sorts of things from what is essentially a poem.

        • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          So you are saying when the Bible says Jesus died for our sins, it doesn’t mean he actually died, it’s only a metaphor.

          • krashmo@lemmy.world
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            6 days ago

            I know it’s tough to pay attention for four whole sentences but if you read them again slowly I think you’ll see that I did not use the words Jesus, sin, or metaphor in any form which should make it pretty clear that, no, I’m not saying that at all.

            • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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              5 days ago

              You handwaved away glaring inaccuracy in what is purported to be the word of God with “it’s just a few paragraphs before the story”.

              If you get to pick and choose what is truth, then anyone else can do it too.

              • krashmo@lemmy.world
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                5 days ago

                No one is having a comprehensive theological discussion with you jackass. We were talking about a very specific thing. Stop being obnoxious.

                • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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                  5 days ago

                  It’s science memes. It’s not serious. I can reply with whatever I want.

                  Funny how you think only your posts are appropriate.

      • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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        6 days ago

        Even the original wording could be read as eon instead of day.

        Most people don’t know that the Hebrew word “yom” (day) can be and is used to denote wildly different lengths of time.

        If anyone is interested you can read a fine destruction of the stupid “Young Earth” argument at the link I provided.

        The “Young Earth” people, both Christian and Jew, are trying to shoe horn something into the Bible that doesn’t fit and doesn’t need to exist. It’s nothing more than a desperate attempt to hold onto an old, wrong headed, and man-made theory.

        • wise_pancake@lemmy.ca
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          6 days ago

          Thanks for that

          I don’t see why God must be incompatible with evolution or the Big Bang or really any of science. God created us to be clever, surely that includes using logic and science to learn about the world.

          Personally I’m agnostic and I try not to judge people. I do judge people who dismiss science and decide faith alone is better.

          • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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            5 days ago

            God created us to be clever, surely that includes using logic and science to learn about the world.

            The argument can be made that since God created humanity in their image that we’re all just fledgling gods with the big difference being our lack of immortality. We’re just not long lived enough as individuals to reach God’s level of power and insight. We are who God created us to be, logic and science included so If we don’t kill ourselves off we may eventually reach a collective godhood, or something akin to it, as a species.

            I’m not saying I believe that argument, I’m just pointing out that it’s there because it supports your point.

        • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          The excuse that the Hebrew word for day could mean an extremely long period of time doesn’t work because plants and trees were created before the Sun and insects (pollinators).

        • wise_pancake@lemmy.ca
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          6 days ago

          I skimmed that link and it’s pretty interesting, I’ll have to spend more time on it. I definitely liked the part at the end about God being the observer in this context, so what’s a day to him.

      • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        The original wording can’t be read as eon instead of a day because plants and trees could’t last for an eon before the sun was created.

    • PaintedSnail@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      This is why you can never disprove creationism sufficiently to convince a young Earth creationist. The hypothesis is unfalsifiable.

    • TaTTe@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Also I’m amazed by how people don’t seem to understand what half-life is. It’s not the time it takes for an atom to decay. It’s the time it takes for half of the atoms to decay, meaning there will be some U-238 that decay into Ra-226 in just a couple of seconds.

      So even if the Earth was created 4000 years ago with uranium but not lead (for some weird reason), some of that lead would have decayed into lead by now.

    • zante@slrpnk.net
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      6 days ago

      Yes but this is a 16 year who watched a YouTube and owns noobs

    • StaticFalconar@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Well there’s also no way to disprove that everything was created last Tuesday including the memories of things/events happening before last Tuesday.

    • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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      6 days ago

      The weirdest part to me is thinking the timeless omnipotent god that the Bible explicitly says considers a thousand years less than nothing actually literally meant that he created everything in what we’d perceive as 7 days when talking to whatever arbitrary scribe wrote down the creation myth for him.

      • Forester@yiffit.net
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        6 days ago

        So it’s more like God appears to this guy named Abraham and tells him the story and then his great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great, great great grandchildren wrote it down. But in the original Hebrew it doesn’t use a word that means day they use a word that means unit of time.

        • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          That still doesn’t work because plants and trees are created before the sun. Not to mention the lack of pollinators because God hadn’t yet created insects.

          • Forester@yiffit.net
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            6 days ago

            Clearly you’ve never played telephone.

            I’m just amazed that the ancient israelis got it as close as they did to our modern understanding of the process of the formation of the universe through only oral tradition and not from any hard sources of science.

            Personally I’m in the camp that says trust the science and realize that ancient Israeli tribals weren’t the best at keeping 100% accurate records.

            I’m also partial to the simulation theory variant where we are the sims on Gods PC.

            • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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              6 days ago

              Got it close? It’s wrong in almost every way possible. Earth before Sun. Plants before the sun. No insect pollinators until after the sun and birds before land animals.

              It’s completely random.

                • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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                  5 days ago

                  It’s fine if you don’t read the Bible literally. As long as you also accept that Jesus didn’t actually die and resurrect. You didn’t read it literally, did you?

            • Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world
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              5 days ago

              Isn’t it weird how God manifests himself in different ways depending where your physical location on earth is. It’s almost like if each culture puts its own spin on religion because there is no continuity between a people that existed thousands of years ago and the people of today.

        • tetris11@lemmy.ml
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          6 days ago

          There’s a fun belief in physics regarding this “superdeterminism”.

          It essentially states that two entangled particles exhibit entanglement not because of any property between them but because they share the same cause origin point (the big bang) and that their respective spin states correlate more with the big bang than each other. Essentially the spin experiments will always appear to show entanglement, but it’s actually a byproduct of the big bang.

          Which, as we can all maybe agree, is fucking weak by order of being disprovable

    • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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      6 days ago

      Also, we could be way off on the age because we just don’t know. Sure, we can collect data and extrapolate for billions of years and assume that all elements have always decayed at the same rate, but short of living through it and accurately measuring it with modern instruments, molecules-to-man “macro” evolution can’t actually be proven.

      This is why, using the Scientific Method, it is still a theory. A theory accepted by most scientists, but still. There’s a certain arrogance in declaring solved something we can’t actually know for 100% certainty.

  • T156@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    The problem with that argument is that it falls into the Last Thursdayist problem.

    It could just as well be argued that the lead was created instantly in that state, or mid-decay.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      The problem with this argument from the fundamental level is that 99% of religious zealots don’t give two shits about your science or facts. There is a whole segment of the human population that has no mind for factual information and just decides to believe whatever they feel.

      There is no real arguing with these people, they don’t care about evidence or science, I am quite convinced they don’t even understand things the same way as other people and don’t have an internal mind-voice that works the same way as other people. It’s just a totally different conscious experience, and despite making full use of our science and technology, they don’t exist in a world where that matters.

      The hard part about this understanding is you realize there’s no resolution. They can’t be changed because they’re not unsatisfied with their world. A smart person is never satisfied and will always ask questions and even ask questions about the questions. Not these people. They actively are annoyed by questions and even see learning things as a kind of sin or spiritual crime.

      So lets save our collective energy and instead focus on making classrooms better funded and knowledge available and unavoidable for the younger children growing up in this world and still developing their minds. I was pulled out at an early age simply by finding a few science books, others can be too.

  • yarr@feddit.nl
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    5 days ago

    Here’s the bad faith argument:

    At the moment of creation, God placed some partially decayed metals on the planet to fool the non-believers.

    This is basically why the existence of dinosaur bones doesn’t bother them either – they just hand-wave it away.

    • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Counter handwave, any god that would do that is a jerk who doesn’t deserve worship. (Actually like 99% of the shit most faiths deities do falls into that category.)

      • yarr@feddit.nl
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        5 days ago

        Bad faith argument:

        In the holy book, inspired by this god, he tells you he DOES deserve worship. Furthermore, were you to ignore his advice, he will punish you eternally.

        • Sylvartas@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          Yeah, well, if that mf does actually exist, I’ll feel real vindicated as I scream in agony for eternity, for holding the opinion that a God that needs to threaten me into worshipping him is not benevolent at all !

          • BluesF@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            All the cool people will be right there with you my friend. Well, almost all, anyway.

          • oo1@lemmings.world
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            5 days ago

            If I were god I might do all sorts of shit to test the supposed intelligence of my creations. That might include including telling them “do some pointless thing, or else”.

            It might interest me to see if they’re capable of reasoning or testing to determine that the task is pointless and the threat is empty. Probably not, but its hilarious for them to think they matter to me; It’s like a videogame to me.

            It only takes 6 days for me to start whole a new game. I’m probably bored of it long before now or at least well ino my hundred and somethingth play-through light-years away. I prefer keeping the dinosaurs because they’re way cooler than humans.

            • DeanFogg@lemm.ee
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              5 days ago

              …But I killed the dinosaurs because I watched a brontosaurus eat its own shit

  • nialv7@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    this argument isn’t going to work on someone who believes god created said lead… and also, pretty sure not all lead was created from nuclear decay.

    i get dunk on people feels satisfying, but this is just bad science communication through and through

    • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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      6 days ago

      I had a conversation with a woman who strongly believed God put the dinosaur bones there to test our faith.

      • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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        5 days ago

        what an idiot, clearly god put the bones in the ground because dinosaurs were his favourite creation and he wanted us to know about them. Had he not put them there we’d have no idea, and he’d be very sad.

    • rockerface 🇺🇦@lemm.ee
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      6 days ago

      Some lead might have been created from supernova fusion, probably. I’m not actually sure if it’s the right isotope or if lead even has radioactive isotopes that we know of

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      5 days ago

      Also, the half life is when half of it decays. Some of it is constantly decaying. We don’t need to wait for the half life to see any of it. The ratios would be totally off if there was enough of it to get the amount of lead we have right now, but some would exist. When the math is that complex, it’s not going to change anyone’s mind who believes what a magic book (written by regular humans) says. Nothing will, be if you want a chance it has to be something simple and obvious.

    • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      There are exactly 1.6 x 10^18 kilograms of lead on earth but every three minutes or so a brand new gram is welcomed into existence due to the radioactive decay of uranium.

      Calculate that flat earthers!

  • ClassifiedPancake@discuss.tchncs.de
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    You can throw as much science at them as you want. God could have just created everything in whatever state he wanted to. Same thing with the virgin mary discussion. Who cares if it makes sense scientifically, god can just make a fertilized egg appear. How lame would god be if he could not do that? This is the basis christians start from, so why even bother trying to debate that?

  • MicrowavedTea@infosec.pub
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    6 days ago

    Pretty sure the point of creationism is that everything was put on the earth when it was created, including fossils etc. You can’t argue this with logic. My favorite spin off of this is Last Thursdayism where the earth was created last Thursday (regardless of what day it’s now) which basically uses the same argument.

    • Ddub@lemmy.ca
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      6 days ago

      That does explain why I can never get the hang of Thursdays

    • Thorry84@feddit.nl
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      6 days ago

      And the fun scientific counterpart of the Boltzmann brain. The idea that in an infinite universe (at least in a couple of the spatial dimensions if not also a time dimension) random fluctuations could combine to form your brain. Including all of your memories, thoughts, hopes and dreams. You think you have had an entire life, but in reality your brain was just formed moments ago. And it may possibly stop existing in a few more moments, this moment being the only one the brain has actually experienced.

      When taken to its natural conclusion, the entire Earth of even the solar system or galaxy might have just been created by random chance. The perfect storm of randomness. It may have been created longer ago or just nanoseconds before now. There is no way of telling.

      Thermodynamics has been used to counter and strengthen this idea. And with infinity on the table anything goes.

      • Ashelyn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        6 days ago

        I always found the idea of stable Boltzmann brains fascinating. The idea that on an infinite enough universe, there must exist self-sustaining minds that function on an entirely circumstantial set of rules and logic based on whatever the quantum soup spit up.

      • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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        6 days ago

        You think you have had an entire life, but in reality your brain was just formed moments ago. And it may possibly stop existing in a few more moments, this moment being the only one the brain has actually experienced.

        A moment in which I sit on the toilet and read philosophy on my fondleslab and perhaps make this comment. Really a wild thought

      • Ashelyn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        It’s also hard to argue while also claiming your god is moral, which is why creationists usually scapegoat the task of planting fossils to Satan.

  • sweetpotato@lemmy.ml
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    I genuinely don’t understand how uranium can exist a priori in this argument but lead not? I might be missing something.

    • Pazuzu@midwest.social
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      5 days ago

      The original post only gave half the explanation. It’s not that lead exists in general, it’s that lead exists within zircon crystals.

      Under normal circumstances that would be impossible, zircon crystals strongly reject lead atoms as they form. There’s no way to stuff lead into the crystal lattice in the quantity we find them there. But uranium and zircon go together just fine, we just have to wait for it to decay into lead. The trouble is it takes ~4.5 billion years for just half of those uranium atoms to turn into lead. So any zircon crystal we find with half as much lead as uranium must be roughly that old

      • Jyek@sh.itjust.works
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        5 days ago

        But that still doesn’t change the belief that a creator could have created the universe in whatever state it currently exists in. That’s why these arguments never go anywhere with hard core young earth creationists. It’s also not worth the energy arguing with them because they often believe that anyone trying to convince them otherwise is an antichrist trying to lead them astray.

        • DontTakeMySky@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          If God created it in that state then they should be curious to understand that creation. They look at rainbows as the beauty of creation but not the fact that lead exists in these crystals. It’s all equally beautifully complex. So why not try to understand it.

          If God made the world look like it was created billions of years ago there must be something worth learning from that, even if you believe it was snapped into existence 6000 years ago.

          • PapaStevesy@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            Tbf for your specific example, rainbows are specifically mentioned and “explained” in the Bible. After drowning all life on Earth except for Noah and a bunch of inbred animals, God sent the wainbow down as a pwomise that he would nevew do it again 👉👈

        • Billegh@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          It doesn’t. It was never the point of his post. You can still believe that if you want. His reasoning for why he doesn’t is outlined there.

          It comes down to whether or not you find processes that we have researched and documented time and time again to be compelling evidence, or you want to believe it is a practical joke (while reductive, it is pretty much that argument breaks down to being).

      • xx3rawr@sh.itjust.works
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        4 days ago

        This the explanation I’m looking for. OP didn’t make sense to me, lead could be created in supernovae and shit just like every other heavy element

      • mosiacmango@lemm.ee
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        5 days ago

        “God put all of that there, and then made it work to ensure we had quality lead gasoline, pipes and paint to poison our brains with cause freedom.”

        • Comment105@lemm.ee
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          Is that what were doing now? Regurgitating stereotypical insults on a post where the “pro science” side dropped the ball and leaned on a ridiculously stupid misunderstanding to disprove something stupider?

          You all fucking disappoint me.

  • pyre@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    the answer completely disregards the fact that people who even remotely understand how these things work wouldn’t believe stupid shit in the first place. there are so many ways for this guy to just dismiss this.

    how would you even know, you can’t have studied these for billions of years

    who says lead only can exist in this manner

    what if this is true but god also made lead along with the earth

    etc etc… this is very weak if the goal is really try to convince this guy to look into some things rather than smell your own farts.

    • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
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      There are many scientists who are strict belivers. They just move the act of creation to the big bang and it’s still in gods plan.

      • pyre@lemmy.world
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        yeah the insistence that creation must mean it happens in an instant is just demonstrably pointless. we already say god created us. and we know we don’t come into existence in full adult form in an instant. we have a whole birth-baby-toddler-kid-teen-adult transformation. and before that we know there is a whole process in the womb. so when god creates a person he puts an entire process into motion. why can this not be the case for the entire universe? why not evolution? are they saying that god couldn’t have thought of a system? I find it weird.

  • LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
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    Technically this could all be true even if the universe were created 4000 years ago. As somebody says in Robert Heinlein’s novel Job: A Comedy of Justice, “Yes, the universe is billions of years old, but it was created 4000 years ago. It was created old.” (approximate quote from memory)

    I absolutely agree with science, but strictly speaking we can’t know for sure the universe isn’t the creation of some superbeing operating outside of it - or it could even be a simulation.

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      We can’t prove that the world we live in wasn’t created last Thursday, with our memories, the growth rings in trees, and so on created by a (near) omnipotent trickster to deceive us. But science and rationality give us tools for determining what’s worth taking seriously, and sorting out the reasonable, but unconfirmed, claims from the unverifiable hogwash.

      • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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        Actually the universe was created on Jan 1st 1970. That’s why computers sometimes have errors with pre-1970 dates, it’s the universal simulation glitching due to the high clock rate of computers compared to the universe’s. Anyone who claims to have been born before 1970/01/01 is a simulation that’s lying to you, and anyone born after is real, hence why now that its more player characters than NPCs things are going off the rails politically and socially!

      • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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        Pffff. Look at this conspiracy bullshit.

        Everyone knows that the universe will actually be created tomorrow. What you are experiencing now is a flashback from tomorrow of what you did yesterday. Prove me wrong.

      • Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world
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        What a tricky god to even implant memories of me imagining all of creation happening only a few seconds ago every time I read about this particular anecdote in the false past.

      • where_am_i@sh.itjust.works
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        And yet simulation theory has a very reasonable merit.

        And if it were to turn out true, you’d also have to admit that OOPs argument was hogwash. Actually, it is either way.

        If you can’t logic better than religious people, then you’re the problem.

        • jj4211@lemmy.world
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          It’s got as much merit as any other faith based theory of existence.

          We see things that don’t seem to make any intuitive sense in science, and simulation theory is one explanation, but without any evidence (and really, there can’t be evidence against, because it faces the same response of “any evidence against is explicitly put there by the simulation”).

          Simulation theory is essentially science-themed religious theory rather than directly evidence based theory.

          I’ll admit it’s a fun “why” as to the weirdness of quantum mechanics and relativity, but ultimately the hard science folks I respect confess they are just finding models that predict stuff accurately, and the various extrapolations to intuitive neat things people make up in that context are beyond the realm of “science” (simulation theory and many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics are the biggest ones I can think of).

    • madeinthebackseat@lemmy.world
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      We can’t know anything with 100% certainty. We can always imagine some razzle-dazzle, imagined scenario to counter the rational explanation if we like.

      The point of the scientific method and logical reasoning is to pick the explanation with the most evidence.

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
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      The existence of a god is something that can’t be disproven. You can always find gaps in knowledge and explain the gap by saying a god / multiple gods did that. As gaps narrow with more knowledge, you can always just say that the holy books were just a metaphor in this one case, but the rest of it is literally true.

      It gets even more complicated when you run into people who refuse to believe in any science, or anything outside their own personal experience.

      Personally, I believe the Earth is a sphere. I’ve been to Australia, Europe, Africa, Asia and North America. The time the flights took and the routes the in-flight maps showed make sense for a spherical earth. So did the scenes visible out the windows, and the day/night cycle. The mere existence of time zones and seasons strongly suggests the Earth is a rotating sphere tilted slightly off vertical. But, it could be that I’m living in a Truman Show world, where everything is a lie designed to make me believe something that isn’t true. I haven’t personally done all the math, all the experiments, etc. to prove the Earth is a sphere. And, if this were a Truman Show world, the producers of the show could mess with my experiments anyhow.

      For someone who doesn’t want to believe, there’s really nothing you can do to make them believe. The world really relies on trust and believing Occam’s Razor.

      • J Lou@mastodon.social
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        6 days ago

        If we assume that god, by definition, must be omniscient, there is actually a way to disprove the possibility with the following paradox:

        This sentence is not known to be true by any omniscient being.

        There are also more traditional arguments like the problem of evil

        @science_memes

        • merc@sh.itjust.works
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          If we assume that god, by definition, must be omniscient

          Why must that be true by definition? Many of the Greek gods were clearly not omniscient, because the stories about them all involve intrigues and hiding things from each-other.

          Also, you can’t disprove a god’s existence by making a logic puzzle that’s hard for you to puzzle out. Just because it’s a toughie for you doesn’t mean that it disproves the existence of gods.

          That isn’t even a particularly difficult logic puzzle.

          • J Lou@mastodon.social
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            Self-referential paradoxes are at the heart of limitative results in mathematical logic on what is provable, so it seems plausible a similar self-referential statement rules out omniscience.

            Greek gods are gods in a different sense than the monotheistic conception of god that is omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent. Sure, so the argument I give only applies to the latter sense.

            @science_memes

            • merc@sh.itjust.works
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              That’s not a paradox though, it’s a silly logic puzzle that isn’t hard to solve. It doesn’t prove or disprove anything about omniscience or gods.

              • J Lou@mastodon.social
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                It is a paradox if you believe there are omniscient beings. If there are no omniscient beings, there is no paradox. The sentence is either true or false. If the sentence is true, we have an omniscient being that lacks knowledge about a true statement. Contradiction. If it is false, there is an omniscient being that knows it to be true. This means that the statement is true, but the statement itself says that no omniscient being knows it to be true. Contradiction.

                @science_memes

                • merc@sh.itjust.works
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                  It’s not a paradox, it’s a dumb logic puzzle. It’s no different than saying something nonsensical like “This sentence contains 2 words”.

                  If it is false, there is an omniscient being that knows it to be true

                  No, if it is false, then it is simply wrong. A wrong sentence doesn’t imply something else is right, it’s just wrong.

    • psycho_driver@lemmy.world
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      How did the matter that constitutes the universe come into being? What was the single point that signifies the beginning of time? What set time in motion? Will time continue after the death of the universe?

      None of it is worth trying to wrap our tiny little monkey brains around as far as I’m concerned. Go have a pint and listen to music that makes you happy.

  • affiliate@lemmy.world
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    unfortunately i don’t believe in uranium or numbers higher than 200, so this argument doesn’t work on me

  • Mercuri@lemmy.world
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    I typically use the fact that there are trees older than 4000 years old based on tree ring data. Or that there are stars in the sky further than 4000 light years away that we can see in the sky.

    That usually makes them say something like how their God created an world that was already aged. So I usually counter with the fact that would make their God a lier and deceiver.

    Some hold firm and say God did it to test faith. Others back pedal and try to blame it on Satan. That Satan scattered all this false evidence just to make us question the notion that Earth is 4000 years old to make people lose faith in God. And then I have to laugh at how stupid their argument is and how weak their God is. Naturally no amount of evidence or logic will make them change their belief.

    • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
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      The important thing is, you’re compelling people to examine their pre-existing beliefs. They won’t change their beliefs during your conversation, because deprogramming takes time. But the more seeds of doubt you plant, the better the chances are that some will germinate.

      I find that the most effective way to encourage people to question themselves is to discuss things calmly and in good faith, through in-person conversations. Challenging people to “convert me” has been surprisingly fruitful - after all, I honestly would love to believe that a benevolent deity is looking out for us all. (As well, tons of believers would equally love to be the one who “shows [you or me] the light.”) I want them to provide compelling evidence that can change my mind.

      Approaching the conversation in this fashion not only challenges the “missionary” types to think harder, but it also shifts the onus onto them to convince you. If they’ve never thought critically about their message, this kind of conversation may introduce questions that stick with them long after it’s over.

      • kitnaht@lemmy.world
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        And even better because they start to come to their own thought-out conclusions. There’s less baggage in the way for them to eventually work their way through it. Especially when they’ve got to convince you - because mysteriously they always jump to all of this “proof” to show you.

        It doesn’t happen immediately, and if you try to speed it up you’ll just cause them to reverse course.

        I’ll sprinkle a little bit of … my own confusion into the mix? As an example, I’ll remain interested, but be like “wait, you said X but then you said Y - doesn’t that contradict X?” I’ll let them explain and not fight them on it, but send them off with a warm smile.

        Not everyone will break free of the programming, but some will - and that’s all I can hope for.

  • LilDumpy@lemmy.world
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    Real question: Is the decay of uranium the only natural way to produce lead? If so TIL.

    • Nougat@fedia.io
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      Iron is the heaviest element capable of being created inside stars, via fusion. Once iron is fused, the star begins to rapidly collapse.

      Elements heavier than iron (28) are the result of supernova explosions, which produce energies high enough to create these heavier atoms. It is further possible, as described in the image, for very heavy elements to decay into lighter more stable elements, those still being heavier than iron.

      Lead is 82.

        • Nougat@fedia.io
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          Interesting. Of note, this process would mainly be in a very specific kind of star, and still would depend on an iron “seed” leftover from a previous supernova. Technically, still requires a “regular” supernova.

    • Gork@lemm.ee
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      No. Nucleosynthesis of lead within stars generated from supernovae make up the bulk of the existing lead on Earth. Uranium decay does provide some additional lead inventory but would be fairly small in comparison.

      But the presence of it in the first place within second generation stars proves that lead is billions of years old.

    • Rooskie91@discuss.online
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      When supernovas explode they’re responsible for most exotic elements larger than iron. So it’s either that or radioactive decay.