this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024

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Eat lead (mander.xyz)

submitted 4 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 311 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (8 children)

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.)

[–] [email protected] 67 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (4 children)

Also this doesn’t say anything about the Earth.

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

god created the heaven and the earth. God created the heavenly bodies.
God created the sky - earths atmosphere and climate
God separates oceans - creates continental forms, and plant based life
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.
God creates birds and sea creatures. Maybe birds are dinosaurs.
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.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 4 weeks ago

It's literally a poem in the original language.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 weeks ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks 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).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago

Simple answers for simple minds

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago

These are perfect plants that do reverse photosynthesis, make sense now?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

The obvious solution is to make a science that is unfalsifable. Then argue about who would win, like superman vs goku.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 weeks 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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 weeks ago

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 weeks 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 3 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

It blows my mind that there are atheists who read the Bible literally.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

It's so nice that you showed up to have a bad faith argument. Look at you so precocious.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

You want it both ways.

And I see the insults are starting because you have no reasonable reply.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

I'm very open to discuss my beliefs but you have to ask instead of insult.

Have you ever considered that I do believe in a literal Jesus that lived and died. My personal interpretation is God an nth dimensional being fires up the sim known as our universe and has fun designing spacetime and life in our sim for a few billion years. Eventually he gets bored and wants more interactive NPCs. So then God decided to impart sapience via further evolution to our human ancestors. He gets frustrated with the NPCs and their weird primate behaviors and tries to do the authority figure bit, it fails. Makes a new plan become part human and live as a human to understand our perspective better. Immediately realizes how fucked his creation is once it is able to be experienced in our time based chemistry driven existence and absolves the whole sin thing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Have you ever considered that I do believe in a literal Jesus that lived and died.

I know. That's why I brought it up and you reacted so hostile.

You pick and choose what to believe. You believe in Jesus only because it's in the Bible but don't believe in the parts Bible when it's inconvenient.

Science memes is for science jokes, not Christian apologetics.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I've read your comment history your tone is repugnant and condesending. I do not believe that my definition of hostile and your definition of hostile can be reconciled if you think your comments are amicable.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

You dismiss anyone who believes in the entire Bible as reading it wrong, yet find it insulting when it is suggested that you are the one reading it wrong.

I'm only pointing out hypocrisy.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Show me where I said that you were wrong. I have stated what I believe. I have called you descriptions of your attitude. I have expressed amusement that somebody who clearly does not believe in religion would enter uninvited into arguments from a false position of authority on the subject matter while you are very clearly not somebody who's actually read it. If by chance you have actually read from the Torah, the Bible and the Quran, you clearly missed a lot. This is not an attack. I would implore you to work on your reading comprehension skills as they seem to be lacking. There's a reason that you have to take humanities courses in college even if you're going for a full stem career. It's to help you become a more rounded person. One of my choice electives was religious studies. As you age, you'd be best to remember that nobody likes the annoying atheist it's peak 4chan cringe. If you don't believe in God, that's your choice.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Show me where I said that you were wrong.

You called my comment, which contained no insults, an insult.

If you can say the 7 day creation of the Bible isn't literal, then Jesus's resurrection can be non literal too. That's not an insult. That's pointing out hypocrisy.

There are many who believe in the Bible. You stating that it isn't literal would be an insult to them. But to you, it's not an insult. To you only denying the literal truth of the parts you believe in is an insult.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Just a little fun fact about the abrahamic religions.

It's explicitly stated that there are other gods. It's just that the abrahamic one does not like them and wants to be the god of everything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 weeks ago

If it wasn't a day then how did all the plants and trees live without sunlight?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I thought carbon dating of fossils was our best argument against the 4000 years myth.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

God could have put the fossils there with the right carbon isotopes.

You can't use logic to disprove belief in magic.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks 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

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 weeks 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.