Dinosaurs | Imamother

↑ yogabird ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 5:28 pm

BlueRose52 wrote:

No, sorry. Using the explanation of "the flood aged everything to make it look older" falls flat when you know that there are countless other scientific sources for the world being billions of years old, independent of there being a world altering flood. (Not that that theory even makes sense scientifically on its own, but we can put that aside.) Some other sources for the world being much older than 5774 years:

* Cosmological - radiometric age dating of lunar and meteorite material
* Biological - DNA Phylogenetic research
* Astronomical - light traveling from distant galaxies takes millions and billions of years to reach us
* Astrophysics - measuring the rate of expansion of the universe

More detail on these various approaches can be read in the links and here: http://biologos.org/questions/.....verse

Of course, one can always use the "Hashem created the world already looking old" explanation (or other approaches) to resolve these difficulties.

Every single one of the methods you bring is based on extrapolation into the distant past, and the assumption that the laws of physics operated the same way they do now right after the universe came into existence.

Radioactive dating assumes the rate of decay has been constant, and also assumes that more of the substance was there to begin with.

What's even more surprising (telling?) that the conclusions regarding the age of the universe according to each of the branches of science will differ from each other by millions of years.

↑ sequoia ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 5:30 pm

gold21 wrote:

She's getting a doctorate in evolutionary biology?
Oh, yes, she totally reflects on most MO people, I'm sure that's a common degree for MO women...
Um, no.

Whether it is a popular degree or not isn't the question.

The question is, does believing in evolution make you not frum?

They are not, you'll agree, equivalent.

↑ BlueRose52 ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 5:32 pm

yogabird wrote:

All this is totally irrelevant to the point I was making, which I repeated twice, so I'm not going to say it again.

↑ octopus ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 5:33 pm

gold21 wrote:

Hmm.

I don't know the answer to that question.

Let me think a sec.

OK.

No, Im not saying that.

I'm not sure that I have ever heard of a frum person who believes in evolution, but I have no idea about how that would reflect on level of frumkeit.

#Clueless

how does believing in dinosaurs= believing in evolution??? you're throwing around apples and cucumbers. (besides the fact that even scientists don't "believe" in evolution the way darwin said. but evolution is a whole other topic).

saw50st8 ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 5:35 pm

octopus wrote:

you realize this number is the age of the world since the birth of adam? the age of the world and the age of the universe are 2 separate things. the universe is much older than our world. Hashem created worlds before this one . dinosaur bones can be relics of past worlds. I have a problem with ppl saying Hashem dropped bones in order to confuse us. Is it one of Hashem's middos to operate in a way that's gneivas daas???to say that dinos never existed is outright kefira. are you saying Hashem wasnt capable of creating dinos???

Before this thread, I didn't realize people still literally thought the world was less than 6,000 years old. I don't think I know of anyone who thinks that, including my RW family.

↑ octopus ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 5:35 pm

yogabird wrote:

and yet not one of them says the universe is 5,000 and change years old.

↑ yogabird ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 5:36 pm

BlueRose52 wrote:

All this is totally irrelevant to the point I was making, which I repeated twice, so I'm not going to say it again.

Okay. So you're trying to say that if we need to explain why the world *looks* old but isn't actually, we can use any of those methods as opposed to the mabul.

If you agree that those methods are not very accurate, and they just make the world *seem* older than it actually is, what makes them scientific? And why are those better explanations than the mabul?

↑ gp2.0

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 5:37 pm

gold21 wrote:

Sorry, but evolution is such a broad term covering such a large scope of facts that yes it is clueless to say you "don't believe in evolution."

Natural selection, gene mutation and hybrid plants and animals are very obvious examples of evolution happening all around us. We are all constantly evolving. Of course the world is different now than it was thousands of years ago.

↑ yogabird ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 5:40 pm

gp2.0 wrote:

You're talking micro-evolution in the biological realm. Generally, when someone says "evolution" they either mean the evolution of the universe, or, more commonly, Darwin's theory of macro, inter-species evolution.

↑ gold21 ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 5:42 pm

gp2.0 wrote:

Ok, I'm clueless on this issue.

I only started replying to this thread due to extreme boredom.

What's your point?

I said I was clueless.

↑ gold21 ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 5:43 pm

saw50st8 wrote:

Before this thread, I didn't realize people still literally thought the world was less than 6,000 years old. I don't think I know of anyone who thinks that, including my RW family.

C'mon, Saw. You went to BYM, right?
I'm sure you know lots of people who believe the world is less than 6K years old.

Last edited by gold21 on Thu, Jan 16 2014, 10:37 pm; edited 1 time in total

↑ octopus ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 5:46 pm

yogabird wrote:

So what? If science can't come to a consensus, what makes it a fact? Why should I choose their infactual (by their own definition) statements over the Torah's?

yet if you choose to use biblical sources you most certainly can reach a number that's very close to what scientists say. someone quoted the pasuk from tehilim on the first page. where the torah wasn't given until a 1000 generations. if you count how many generations there are between adam and matan torah the number is very close. rabbi aryeh kaplan writes this in his book.

↑ yogabird ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 5:47 pm

Success10 wrote:

The above statement about the Sun revolving around the Earth is written in the Gemara, not in the Tanach. The argument at hand would be if the Rabbis had imperical knowledge of science, or if they were subject to the occasional ignorance. The Gemara also states that it is muttar to kill lice on Shabbos because "Lice are not organisms born from pre-exsting lice, they are borne of sweat" or something to that extent. The halacha as it stands today is that it is still muttar to kill lice on Shabbos, even though according to modern science, we know they are organisms. This is not a one sided issue, and people have different things to say about this. The opinion I have come to follow is that, as nuts as it may sound, science changes by the minute, whereas the rabbis attained their knowledge from the Torah, and we don't doubt it, even if it may not jive with what we learn in grade school today.

But we live in this world! Will we just throw modern science by the wayside? Not take their pills? No, they are two separate realities, and they don't have to agree. We can accept that both are true in some way. But if I had to choose only one reality as emes, I'd choose the Torah one.

Regarding the Earth revolves around sun debate, it's not so clear to me (or other people) that that's what the gemara says. I don't learn gemara, so I'm not entirely sure what it does say, but I have discussed this with dh in the past. Regardless, it doesn't bother me, because I see what the Torah and gemara say as a separate reality to what science says, and they are allowed to contradict, without explanation.

the statement that the sun revolves around the earth is an entirely valid one according to the theory of general relativity.

and science has NOT ruled out spontaneous generation. they don't know everything there is to know about organisms either. neither do they claim they do.

↑ octopus ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 5:48 pm

octopus wrote:

I totally explained this wrong. two year old tantruming. will post later.

↑ gold21 ↓

Thu, Jan 16 2014, 5:50 pm

Now I'm sure this comes as a shock to all you ladies who read astronomy books, but I do consider myself to be educated and intelligent, yet I never studied evolution, nor do I care to. I believe the world is a old as the Jewish Year is.

I have close friends who have doctorates who have never discussed the issue of evolution with me. We talk about our lives, our feelings, etc- we don't discuss dinosaurs. My sister manages a team of business analysts in a Wall Street firm and never discussed dinosaurs with me.

So yeah, we're probably just really dumb.