An Invitation to George_Tr

The other day with the big Twitter "No God" bit, I responded to several Twitterers (is that the correct term?) silly claims. In particular George_Tr posted the bit from Psalms 14:1 about how a foolish man says in his heart there is no God. I responded by pointing out a wise man says it in his head (you know, where rational place and all that takes place).

George then responded back saying that the word of man is foolish, so I pointedly reminded him of one of the dumbest claims in the bible: Pi = 3 (I Kings 7:23).

George ignored this and started making several claims, like "intelligence is in the smallest particle yet studied". I don't even know what that's supposed to mean. Particles are intelligent? Or that they show signs of an intelligent designer? Well, ID/Creationism fails utterly, so either way, it's a stupid comment on his part.

He then stated: "I dare any man to scientifically disprove Gen 1:1-31".

It doesn't take much. The order is way off. To show that, let's take a look at the order in Genesis. The very first thing it claims happened is the earth was watery and formless.

From what we know about how planets form, they are rocky messes initially. Water is only later condensed once the temperature drops enough for it to condense. Additionally, it might be seeded from comets.

Next, light is created. Given we can see light from further distances than 5 billion ly, we know light's been around longer than the Earth. Thus, light should have come earlier, but the Bible gets it WRONG.

The light is separated from darkness. This is just a backwards and naive description of things. "Dark" is just an absence of light just like how "cold" is an absence of heat. Separating the two just doesn't really make sense since they're really different sides of the same thing. At best we could say this had something to do with the era of recombination, when the universe was finally rarefied enough for photons to travel freely making the universe inhomogeneous enough to have a distinction. Either way, this was well before the Earth (or any water) existed.

On day 2, God puts in a real hard days work and separates the atmospheric water from the ground water. In other words, He let evaporation happen (or condensation). Real hard work there. But again, if it were watery (which is a pretty clear description of liquid state as opposed to vapor which would be "mist") then God just did something He already did. Unless He didn't, in which case there's a contradiction.

Day 3 comes and there's suddenly flowering plants. Keep this in mind. I'll bring it up again in a minute.

Day 4 and the Sun turns on. Seriously? Plants existed before the Sun? How much more wrong can you get?! Sorry, that should have been way earlier. Later on day 4 God creates all the other stars. No. Wrong again. Star formation is an ongoing process. Some of the stars that existed are dead. More are being created now. To say they were all created at the same time, especially after is just wrong.

On day 5, there's creatures in the water and birds. Independently, these are right relative to one another. Life in the oceans is at least 3 billion years old. Birds, only ~150 million years old. Looks like the bible is just plain off by a factor of 100. Meanwhile, remember those flowering plants from day 2? In reality, they showed up 425 million years ago. So they should be somewhere on this day. They don't.

Day 6 is pretty vague so it can pass for sheer inability to place.

So let's actually try to these events in the proper order. I'll use the numbering system from the website I linked:

2 - Light: Shortly after the Big Bang lots of photons (light) everywhere
3 - Separation of light and dark : Recombination, light travels freely creating distinction between them.
11 - Stars: Initially, there was no heavy elements, so planets will have to come later.
9 - Sun: The solar system begins forming with the proto-Sun at its center.
1 - Earth beings to condense: Indistinct at this point, but not "watery" as the Bible describes.
4/5/6 - Formation of atmosphere, oceans, and shaping of early continents.
10 - Moon: Best theory is that a Mars sized impactor hit us after the Earth was formed to make the moon.
12 - Water Creatures: Little bitty microorganisms probably.
14 - Land Animals: After the water creatures evolve, they come to land.
7 - Flowering Plants: You know, the ones with seeds and fruit.
13 - Birds: Evolved from dinosaurs after all.
15/16 - Humanity: Sexes evolved simultaneously after all.

(NOTE: I left 8, the Garden of Eden out of this list since there's no evidence to suggest it existed as described in the Bible, and it was conjecture to be in that order on the part of the authors anyway)

So it's pretty clear the order of Genesis is flat out wrong. Forget the 1 day = billions of year garbage. Even if you mess it about, the order isn't even close. Unless, of course, your idea of counting goes 2, 3, 11, 9, 1, (4/5/6), 10, 12, 14, 7, 13, 15/16. If it is, I think preschool is the appropriate place for you.

This whole time I'd been asking George for some evidence on his part instead of bald faced, hollow claims. After all, he kept asking me to "disprove Genesis". I think I pretty conclusively have here. I backed up my claim. When I reminded him that he was really the one with burden of proof (since he's making the positive claim of existence), he balked and replied, "GOD Has no burden of proof, you need to prove your negative declarations."

In other words, he refuses to accept the terms of a fair argument and asks me to do the logically impossible (prove a negative).

His only bit of support came as this response: "This from 1 of Your peers; Read Gerald L Schroeder, PHD MIT Genesis & The Big Bang"

I searched for the book and the best I seem to be able to find is this summary. Essentially, Schroeder seems to claim that he can claim the 1 day = billions of years because time can be relative. Of course, if you know relativity, this would require God to be zipping around the universe at damn near the speed of light. In other words, a supernatural creator that can do whatever He wants decides to limit himself to the relativistic constraints of the universe in order to induce time dilation and play games with units of time for His special project to figure out.

*Blink*

I'm going to call a spade a spade here: That's stupid.

Especially since for most of the time, God was directly working in and on the Earth. In other words, He was bound to the same inertial reference frame. The whole argument crumbles. I won't bother going through the archaeological points since that's not my cup of tea. Additionally, even if we decided for whatever reason this was possible it doesn't mean it's probable or even credible. After all, there could be a teapot in orbit around the sun. But just because the laws of gravity allow for it, doesn't mean we should believe it or worship it.

Regardless, Schroeder's arguments don't work, so I'll expect George to replace them with something with some meat.

George then said, "160 characters is just enough for topic Overview, stop hiding your inability to produce; U have nothing."

Well George, I agree. 160 characters is too short. So come on over here and we'll hash this out paragraph style.

And by the way, I've produced: As I responded in my tweet, the order of Genesis is WAY off. Above is the full explanation of why.

Your only "evidence" can't hold up to itself, so I'll expect better. And no more of the shifting of burden of proof or other logical fallacies please. That's just pathetic.

PS: George, from your Twitter picture, you look a lot like Morgan Freeman. And we all know Morgan Freeman played God in Bruce Almighty. Not relevant to any of this, but I still found it amusing!