back to article Hardcore creationist finds 60-million-year-old fossils in backyard ... 'No, it hasn’t changed my mind about the Bible'

An ardent believer in creationism has dug up fish fossils that boffins say are 60 million years old. That's somewhat further back in time than the genesis of life described in the Good Book. If God does exist, he or she has a wicked sense of humor, it seems. Experts at the University of Calgary in Canada say that the bones – …

  1. Six_Degrees

    In other words, creationism makes perfect sense. As long as you ignore all of creation.

    1. Fluffy Bunny
      Facepalm

      A fore-runner of the warmist attitude that their models are perfect, as long as you ignore all the evidence that they are wrong.

      1. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge

        Perhaps the people downvoting this comment could point to one model that matches real-world observations?

    2. VinceH

      He's not ignoring all of creation though, because that's what he believes; that everything was created - including any evidence that things are older than his favourite creation myth says they can be.

    3. Lee D Silver badge

      I'm the absolute opposite of a creationist but...

      I'm more comfortable if you "believe" that God created Earth 6000 years ago to LOOK millions of years old.

      It's still stupid, but is at least self-consistent. And why couldn't a God manage that? Why would he do it is a better question but you could argue, say, that as more humans come into being, he creates more "history" for them to explore for their own satisfaction, entertainment, etc. Otherwise we'd "know" everything already and there'd be nothing new to learn.

      It's all absolute baloney, but at least try to make your beliefs from stuff that you can detect around you rather than what some book claims (indirectly) to be true despite everything to the contrary.

      It's like the concept of Hell - God is so forgiving that everyone who doesn't believe will burn in hell for all eternity? It's self-inconsistent. However, the "belief" that I've heard others express that I can live with: Not believing in God and thus not getting to heaven is it's own punishment... Hell is the absence of heaven, comparatively, not a specific inflicted punishment. That I can see as self-consistent whether it's baloney or not.

      Love everyone, but hate the gays? etc. etc. etc.

      Believe what the Hell (pun intended) you want. But it has to make SOME sense at the very least. And not just "working in mysterious ways".

      1. Marshalltown

        Forgery

        I was almost lynched in a comparative religion class making this same suggestion. Someone blurted, "are you saying God is a forger?" I replied, "only if you believe in a 'Young Earth'". People started o shout. Turned out most of the class was fundies expecting to get their confirmation bias stroked.

        1. Thorne

          Re: Forgery

          "I was almost lynched in a comparative religion class making this same suggestion. Someone blurted, "are you saying God is a forger?" I replied, "only if you believe in a 'Young Earth'". People started o shout. Turned out most of the class was fundies expecting to get their confirmation bias stroked."

          The best argument against them is the Thursday club. The argument stands as everything was made last Thursday. All your memories was implanted by god when he made everything last Thursday. All scientific evidence that the world is older than a week was faked by god to test our faith and so on.

          You can reuse all their arguments and they have to argue that you are wrong and in doing so shoot down all their own arguments.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Forgery

            "You can reuse all their arguments and they have to argue that you are wrong and in doing so shoot down all their own arguments."

            Tried it, doesn't work.

      2. dan1980

        @Lee D

        ". . . he creates more "history" for them to explore for their own satisfaction, entertainment, etc . . . It's all absolute baloney . . ."

        Makes perfect sense actually.

        When you go out, you leave some interesting toys for the dog so that its mind is engaged - there are even ones that you bury in a dedicated area of your garden to stop the dog wrecking the rest of the place.

        Hasn't worked so well with us, unfortunately.

        That said, what are we supposed to learn from all this interesting and sometimes mysterious stuff that lies buried around us? If it's something to interest us and stimulate our minds and we assume (as a creationist would assert) that we were created by the same entity and were given reason and logic and intelligence, then surely all this investigation and examination and measuring and reasoning that leads us to our theories of the history of the planet are, well, just what was intended.

      3. cortland

        God impeached by a believer!

        quote: I'm more comfortable if you "believe" that God created Earth 6000 years ago to LOOK millions of years old.

        I'm uncomfortable with anyone who who believes in God so much as to think his God is a liar.

      4. SolidSquid

        Problem there is you then fall into the deceptive god problem, where God would have to have created the world in a way which explicitly contradicted his own gospel, and as a result could result in damnation for people who believe in the evidence of the earth itself over the gospel. I've seen religious folk call this a "test", and others suggest it was actually Satan who added things like fossils, but both run into issues themselves so it seems like most young earth creationists just go with the "we're interpreting the evidence differently" (ie the bible is part of the evidence set and supersedes physical evidence)

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      We should blame Edgar Nernberg, a science skeptic and evolutionary denier, for the slow progress in curing cancer. Because pockets of skepticism and denial are the only reasons for slow progress in any field of endevour.

    5. itzman

      re: creationism makes perfect sense. As long as you ignore all of creation?

      No, its a lot more logical than that.

      I had dinner with some creationists once. I listened.

      If you compare the scientific story of creation with the creationist's, they are identical. Except that where the scientific story extends the time lines back to an act of Creation knowns as the Big Bang, where all the time lines meet in a singularity, the Creationist time lines are simply truncated 5,000 years ago, when a divine act of creation brought everything into being, fossils and all.

      Philosophically there is no way to establish the 'truth' of either...

      Ultimately one uses Occam's razor, but the simplicity of one explanation or the other is once again a value judgement that differs acording to personal perspective. I find the idea of a Big Bang simple,. and it has excellent explanatory power. The Creationists found it incomprehensible, whereas the thought of a Divine Being who waved a magic wand and brought a complete world into existence was a lot easier to grasp...

      1. dan1980

        Re: re: creationism makes perfect sense. As long as you ignore all of creation?

        @itzman

        "Creationist time lines are simply truncated 5,000 years ago, when a divine act of creation brought everything into being, fossils and all."

        That may have been what those people thought but it's not the general creationist model. Given that this chap is clearly a devotee of Ken Ham (as an Australian, I apologise) I suspect he believes, as Ham does, that the fossils were deposited as part of the great flood.

        On the surface, it should be simple to refute this - just show that radiometric dating proves these bones to be far older, or point out the very clear stratification that is observed. The old "fossilised rabbits in the Pre-Cambrian" line.

        Sadly, the simple fact is that people like Ham and his followers don't start from a point of wanting to know what happened but of already knowing what happened and then massaging the evidence to fit and discounting it when it doesn't. Thus Ham declares that all radiometric dating is suspect and so can't be treated as evidence for an old-Earth.

      2. Clive Galway

        Re: re: creationism makes perfect sense. As long as you ignore all of creation?

        "Ultimately one uses Occam's razor, but the simplicity of one explanation or the other is once again a value judgement that differs acording to personal perspective. I find the idea of a Big Bang simple,. and it has excellent explanatory power. The Creationists found it incomprehensible, whereas the thought of a Divine Being who waved a magic wand and brought a complete world into existence was a lot easier to grasp..."

        As long as you don't ask "Where did the creator come from?". Then you realize that the creationist explanation is way more complicated.

        1. Charles 9

          Re: re: creationism makes perfect sense. As long as you ignore all of creation?

          "As long as you don't ask "Where did the creator come from?"."

          A: The Creator didn't come from anywhere. He always existed, an absolute presence (and many religious people believe the Creator IS the one absolute presence in the universe): always was, is, and will be. In layman's terms, the Creator is outside of time as we know it.

          1. Danny 14

            Re: re: creationism makes perfect sense. As long as you ignore all of creation?

            Actually, creationism does seem to make sense if the planet was also artificially created.

            I mean, perhaps (maybe 6000 years ago) the Galactic Ordnance Division needed to bulldoze some planets to create a new bypass. Perhaps GOD didn't have the correct paperwork (or GOD contracted it to some dodgy people working out of a caravan) so was ordered to rebuild everything EXACTLY as it was before being destroyed. That would explain why GOD needed to create the lot including all the nuances such as 60 million year old fossils.

            Might be mileage in a book for it at least.

  2. jonathan keith

    Evidence.

    How else do you interpret 60 million year old rocks? That boffins have failed God's test of faith?

    1. Anonymous John

      Re: Evidence.

      God created 60 million old rocks 4000 years ago. Piece of piss if you're omnipotent.

      1. 45RPM Silver badge

        Re: Evidence.

        …or incompetent. In mans terms, wouldn't that be akin to making a 40 year old car - an Allegro, or an Avenger say, and trying to sell it as brand new?

        If there is a God, and if He enjoys fuckin' with people's minds that much, I'll take me chances with the other fella. Sure, it'd mean putting up with the oddly placed red hot poker - but at least he's sincere. At least you could trust him.

        1. MJI Silver badge

          Re: Evidence.

          I'd buy a new Avenger.

          As long as Tiger engine

          1. hplasm
            Happy

            Re: Evidence.

            I'd buy a new Avenger.

            As long as it's Purdey...

      2. arctic_haze

        Re: Evidence.

        I dare to disagree. In my opinion the Universe was created 5 minutes ago, including not only all the fossils but also us and our memories.

        1. JW 1

          Re: Evidence.

          >>In my opinion the Universe was created 5 minutes ago, including not only all the fossils but also us and our memories.<<

          oooh, put's me in the mind of the great movie Dark City. May fire that up tonight as the world remakes itself. If you haven't seen it Roger Ebert rightly stated 'if the Matrix were perfect it would be Dark City'

          JW

          1. Danny 14

            Re: Evidence.

            Matrix re used much of the dark city set. Especially ib the rooftop chase scene.

        2. Fluffy Bunny
          Devil

          Re: Evidence.

          I have conclusive proof that the Earth was created the moment I was born and will be destroyed the moment I die. After all, I have no memories of anything that happened before I was born... right?

        3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge
          Pint

          Re: Evidence.

          "In my opinion the Universe was created 5 minutes ago"

          I suppose you sank a few jars last night.

      3. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: Evidence.

        >God created 60 million old rocks 4000 years ago. Piece of piss if you're omnipotent.

        Or God created them last thursday, along with the gentleman in question and his memory of learning that the earth was 4000 years old.

        1. itzman

          Re: Evidence.

          >Or God created them last Thursday, along with the gentleman in question and his memory of learning that the earth was 4000 years old.

          No, I created them this instant, out of vague impressions and a definite feeling that I ought to exist, in some sort of existence, neither of which is of course true.

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Evidence.

        "God created 60 million old rocks 4000 years ago. Piece of piss if you're omnipotent."

        In other words, "God the Trickster," which one can lookup for more information.

        1. Suricou Raven

          Re: Evidence.

          The really impressive trick was walking a few thousand light years in the direction of each extra-galactic object and dropping all those photons pointing towards Earth, ready to be observed by future astronomers.

          1. itzman
            Paris Hilton

            Re: Evidence.

            >The really impressive trick was walking a few thousand light years in the direction of each extra-galactic object and dropping all those photons pointing towards Earth, ready to be observed by future astronomers.

            Piece of cake if you are timeless eternal and omnipotent.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Joke

            Re: Evidence.

            Just a light show projected on a sophisticated backdrop

            1. Danny 14

              Re: Evidence.

              Avenger? Nah. I miss my old twin carb Hillman hunter. A frightening beast that could actually reach the 90mph speedo top speed (allegedly I heard it could be done on the M6 inbetween Preston and Wigan with a rolling start from parbold junction, allegedly)

      5. CAPS LOCK

        Re: Evidence.

        If you're afflicted by omnipotence you should get some Viagra. Problem solved!

    2. sisk

      Re: Evidence.

      How else do you interpret 60 million year old rocks?

      Quite simple: First, the 5000 year mark is based on genealogies which contain NUMEROUS gaps. The time of Genesis could therefore quite easily be much, much further back on the timeline than what these young Earth idiots believe, say around 4.5 billion years ago or so.

      Second, Genesis has an account of the creation of the universe as given to Moses, a man who by his own admission wasn't very smart. Don't you think that rather than try to make a not-very-smart man from a time before anything smaller than what you can see with the naked eye was known understand the complexities of cosmology that God might have dumbed it down into a metaphor that sufficed to get across the point that he created the whole thing?

      In short, I interpret 60 million year old rocks as proof that (shocker) young Earth wonks contribute to giving my religion a bad name.

      Now as to how a young Earther would explain it, I believe the standard explanation is that various factors (such as volcanic activity) can throw off carbon dating and therefore render it unreliable. That claim doesn't hold up under scrutiny though.

      1. Vector

        Re: Evidence.

        "Genesis has an account of the creation of the universe as given to Moses..."

        Actually, Genesis has 2 creation stories: The seven days story in chapter 1 and the story of the Garden of Eden that carries forward from chapter 2.

        The discerning mind will note that the sequence of events in these two stories are in direct conflict.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Evidence. - @sisk

        Unfortunately those of us who learnt a bit about research into the origins of the Bible can tell you that, far from God saying to Moses "Now, Moshe, while we're waiting for Newton and Darwin, let me just give you a headline rundown of how you came to be here", it was more a case that the early compilers of the Big Book of Israelite Literature found they didn't have any creation myths, so just put in a chapter of the origin stories of the various cultures that had conquered or coexisted with them. This explains why there are several different creation myths in Genesis, why the Epic of Gilgamesh is mixed in, why there are two religious cults with different deities - the Elohim who created the Earth in 6 days and Jahweh who ran a large garden centre and had staffing problems - you simply can't get the help to do what they're told these days - and in fact the entire lack of coherent narrative. The "X begat Y" is a further accretion of the prehistorical method of reinforcing clan societies - like Ireland and Scotland with their "Son of..." and "Grandson of", or the Arabs with their Ali ibn Haroon ibn Abdullah ibn....

        The Jahwist myth may be an account of the great drying out of the Middle East which caused a transformation from hunter/gatherer to gardening and finally to agriculture.

        What is quite clear is that anybody who regards Genesis as being in any way intended as what we now consider to be a scientific textbook or historical account is making a monster category error. It isn't incorrect history or incomplete science; it is something else entirely.

        1. Lars Silver badge
          Happy

          Re: Evidence. - @sisk

          "It isn't incorrect history or incomplete science; it is something else entirely." Very much like the tooh fairy.

        2. JustWondering
          Meh

          Re: Evidence. - @Arnaut

          Who are you supposed to believe? Bronze Age goat herders who used their left hand for toilet paper, or some scientists who are probably just making it all up?

          Tough call.

          1. itzman
            Unhappy

            Re: Evidence. - @Arnaut

            >Who are you supposed to believe? Bronze Age goat herders who used their left hand for toilet paper, or some scientists who are probably just making it all up?

            The tragedy these days is that it is a tough call. For many many people.

          2. cortland

            Re: Evidence. - @Arnaut

            Yes, the record has been wiped...

      3. asdf
        Joke

        Re: Evidence.

        > The time of Genesis could therefore quite easily be much, much further back on the timeline than what these young Earth idiots believe

        But then God must have a terrible memory as there are not nearly enough begats in the bible (you know the infallible word of God) to go that far back.

      4. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
        Holmes

        Re: God might have dumbed it down into a metaphor

        Alternatively, and much, much more simply, perhaps this whole "God" thing is a crock of shit, cooked up by some early politicians in order to control the population? That's certainly my interpretation, on the rare occasions when I bother to think about it at all.

        GJC

        1. Rol

          Re: God might have dumbed it down into a metaphor

          Religion is a crock of shit, granted. Goes without saying really, but God? Well I'd hazard a guess someone had to think up 1+ -1 = 0 for nothing to suddenly become everything.

          1. asdf

            Re: God might have dumbed it down into a metaphor

            > a guess someone had to think up 1+ -1 = 0 for nothing to suddenly become everything.

            That's not necessarily religion. Quantum tunneling out of nothing may very well how everything got rolling (literally the metaphor authors use for the scalar field values suddenly changing) according to Hawking.

      5. Apdsmith

        Re: Evidence.

        The thing is, even if all of this god stuff is accurate (I don't think so personally, but that's not important for the sake of this argument) - suppose there is a supreme being who created the entire universe in all it's complexity and sheer size just for the enjoyment of us humans - how, quite how, are you going to explain this to a bunch of goat-herders two thousand years ago in any fashion that will make sense apart from "magic"? Nobody can comprehend the number 4.54 billion, let alone relate to it in terms of placing yourself in scale to such a massive period of time. Similarly, size. If a modern human went back in time to the time these legends were written, if they were able to communicate and if they didn't give everybody some modern-day pathogen that's lethal to the lot of them, how are you going to communicate the size of just our solar system to anybody from that era in any functional way? You'd almost have to introduce some hackneyed number like 5,000 years for it to be understandable.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Evidence.

          "You'd almost have to introduce some hackneyed number like 5,000 years for it to be understandable."

          In fact, at the time of the nomands to whom you refer, the Hindus and the Jains were working with (imaginary) chronologies of billions of years. Big numbers were not a problem. You need to remember that people a few thousand years ago had exactly the same intellectual capacity as us.

          The Islamic expansion in the 600s caused the Dark Ages in Europe, and then the developing Islamic civilisation was itself wrecked by internal dissension and the Christians (the Hapsburgs destroyed the Moorish civilisation). It's a complete mistake to think that there is any kind of linear progress from past to future. An imaginary deity would have been able to explain cosmology perfectly well to a group of Brahmins - and equally to the Babylonians. The decision of that deity to choose a small trible of nomads to receive a very imcomplete revelation is, to say the least, odd.

          So much so that in my experience the remaining theologians who countenance the real existnce of any kind of a god at all, have a vastly different conception from the majority of Christians.

          1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: Evidence.

            "The Islamic expansion in the 600s caused the Dark Ages in Europe"

            As far as Western Europe is concerned the Germanic expansion was more important which was well before the 600s.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Evidence.

              "As far as Western Europe is concerned the Germanic expansion was more important which was well before the 600s."

              I have read arguments that the Teutonic expansion didn't cause the Dark Ages. The Teutons invaded the Empire but they also settled down in it - they accepted Imperial titles and wanted to be part of Roman civilisation, which is why we got the Holy Roman Empire which, as Gibbon remarked, was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire but was a collection of German States. The Teutons caused a hiccup.

              But the Arabs removed access of Western Europe to the Mediterranean and the trade routes, resulting in isolation by mountain ranges and distance. They also controlled access to almost all the gold, thus causing Western Europe to run out of negotiable currency so they couldn't buy abroad. This also led to feudalism when land became the primary asset.

              It was the 1100s before Western civilisation really started to recover, nearly 500 years of backwardness.

              1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

                Re: Evidence.

                The intriguing thing about the (Western) European recovery was that much of the recovery was fuelled by the rather smarter and more developed Arab states that preserved an enormous amount of ancient knowledge but also continued learning and experimenting as well. For example, we wouldn't have our fabulous cathedrals and other buildings from that time without the Arab knowledge and skills of building.

                As for the "Holy Roman Empire"; many of the traditions and customs from it around the Emperor still exist but they are now associated with the Roman Catholic church and the Pope. These are most noticeable in the election of a new pope and the rituals and customs that surround this. Embrace. Extend. Absorb. A pretty traditional business model and it's worked exceptionally well for christianity which is an intriguing mix of a lot of older beliefs.

                When it comes to the book of genesis, even I was taught (by a priest) that it was a later book added to the bible and should only be taken figuratively rather than as, erm, "bible"! Which raises quite a few issues with the whole bible... it's meant to be "god's word", except that it's a book written by people for people, translated from language to language which are bad enough. For example have somebody who's half competent with maps draw the progression of the Israelites out of Egypt and you immediate spot the problems - except that these can't be there because the bible is bible and is therefore utterly and totally infallable. And this is before you know about the arguments about which books actually comprise the bible, particularly which books have been removed from the bible and that this was a human act rather than some act of a divine entity. The rejected books of the bible are sometimes quite an intriguing read and it's evident why many have been cut as some of them are frankly batshit insane.

                ...not sure where the original of this comes from, but: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BssFvtWCMAA1WQ8.jpg

              2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

                Re: Evidence.

                I think we have two definitions of dark age here. AIUI modern historians apply it to a time for which we have few or no sources to tell us what happened. From an English PoV Britannia dropped out of the Western Empire in the early C5th and the external forces at that time were German. Without the Imperial administration only the Church would have been in a position to provide any links with the continent likely to have resulted in surviving documents and the British Church seems to have lost contact before the end of the century. So in these terms the dark age started in the C5th which means that although we know that the Anglo-Saxon settlement followed we have no good account of how it came about. In fact there was no prospect of any records from the Anglo-Saxon side until they were Christianised which mostly fell to the Irish rather than the British (Welsh) Church.

                Contact with Rome started to be re-established about 600AD with Augustine's mission & I suppose we can consider it completely established with the Synod of Whitby in 664AD so we have a period of about 200 years with little or no recorded contact with the Mediterranean and for which there was very limited contemporary evidence.

                With Bede & Alcuin a recovery was definitely under way. Under Alfred in the C9th there was a well organised administration which, like the Roman, used writing and had a silver coinage so access to gold was of less significance.

                As to recovery starting in 1100 an elderly Englishman looking back at that time would have concluded that far from recovering, and Romanesque cathedrals notwithstanding, things had got much worse in his lifetime. And his grandchildren, during the two decades of the Anarchy, would think that they had got worse still.

              3. asdf
                Joke

                Re: Evidence.

                >Gibbon remarked, was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire ... discuss among yourselves

                Funny I thought the coffee talk lady on SNL was the originator of that quote.

        2. Sam 15

          Re: Evidence.

          " If a modern human went back in time to the time these legends were written, if they were able to communicate and if they didn't give everybody some modern-day pathogen that's lethal to the lot of them, how are you going to communicate the size of just our solar system to anybody from that era in any functional way? You'd almost have to introduce some hackneyed number like 5,000 years for it to be understandable."

          Agreed. In order to grasp both the size and time aspects of the universe would require advanced mathematical understanding.

          However, even today journalists are advised to avoid statements like

          "30% of the population" and instead say

          "three people out of ten"

          Depressing isn't it?

          1. Big Ed

            Re: Evidence.

            I'm perplexed by how the creationists came up with the age of the earth. You have to wonder about their analytical skills and whether they actually even have read their own bible beyond the old testament. And I'm even more perplexed that they have the audacity to deny power to their own God.

            First, how do creationists come up with the age of the earth? By assuming that the 7-day story of creation is based on a 24-hour day, and then by trying to piece together gaps in family lineages from the early old testament.

            The last chapter in 2nd Peter says God's day is "like" a thousand years; i.e. God's day is not 24 earth hours in length. Since the story of creation is based on what God did out of the nothingness, a 24-hour day did not exist and therefore can't be used as a measurement.

            Creationists also assert that evolution didn't occur as scientists would have us believe. They insist that God directed the changes along the way. Wouldn't their God be more powerful to have created organisms that could adapt and evolve on their own? I guess they would rather have a neutered God that has to direct everything in real-time.

            Galeleo convinced the knuckleheads in the Catholic Church that the earth was not the center of the universe, it's time for the "creationists" to accept God's word in 2nd Peter and give their God the power to have created organisms that could evolve on their own.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Evidence.

              "Galeleo convinced the knuckleheads in the Catholic Church that the earth was not the center of the universe, it's time for the "creationists" to accept God's word in 2nd Peter and give their God the power to have created organisms that could evolve on their own."

              Actually, the Church doubled down and forced Galileo to shut up or be burned as a heretic. Anyway, the true culprit was Copernicus, as it was his work on heliocentrism that stirred the hornet's nest. Galileo's Starry Messenger simply provided more concrete evidence to support it. Anyway, I recall it wasn't until the 18th century, by which time heliocentrism had a lot more corroborating evidence, particularly in mathematics which couldn't be denied (particularly because the Protestants had no qualms about it), that the Church finally did an about-turn.

      6. Six_Degrees

        Re: Evidence.

        "The time of Genesis could therefore quite easily be much, much further back on the timeline"

        Or, you know, Genesis and the rest of the bible could simply by myth, parable, and allegory, and have no basis whatsoever in reality.

        Has it ever occurred to you that maybe the bible isn't a science textbook, and was never intended to be such a thing?

      7. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Evidence.

        God, if he was real, could have easily avoided all this. Think if Genesis had said "And god gathered up the fire into a ball and created the sun to maketh light and warmth and then he gathered up the earth and water and created another ball, the Earth, which turneth around the sun, as a spit turns a roasting lamb, to maketh the warmth of the day and the cold of the night." That would be something the ancient hebrews could understand but would not have come up with on their own. None of this plate of the Earth under a bowl of the firmament which hebrew and other ancient myths describe.

      8. itzman
        Big Brother

        Re: Evidence.

        A creationist believes that in this world there is only one thing that can be trusted, and that is the literal evidence of the Bible, that was given by God, to Man, to guide him through the temptations of life and keep him on the One True Path to salvation.

        If the Bible says that the world is 6000 years old, then that is indisputable fact, and fossils are just Satanic temptations put there to trap people who have eaten of the Fruit of knowledge away from paradise into the sin of Thinking That They Know Better.

      9. cortland

        Re: Evidence.

        Carbon dating is also really only good for much more recent times.

        http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/radiometric.html

    3. Suricou Raven

      Re: Evidence.

      The standard YEC excuse is to reject the dating. They do not deny the existence of fossils - they claim the fossils were formed during the great flood, as (literal) mountains of sediment rapidly buried organisms. They go on to explain that the 'scientists' who see the fossils as millions of years old have their judgment clouded by their rejection of Christ - they cannot accept a young age, because to do so would by to admit their own fallibility and lend support to the bible that they hate.

      It's almost a half-decent argument - and if it was being used to condemn one form of dating, it would actually sort-of work. Scientists make mistakes. The problem for YECs is that their chronology is in contradiction with carbon dating, potassium dating, polonium halo dates, light-lag distance dates and minimum dates, lunar helium-3 accumulation rates, extrapolated tectonic movement rates, genetic drift common-ancestor dating calculations, common-ancestor ERVs, stellar evolutionary models, observed supernova expansion clouds, archaeological dating, historical records and dendrochronology. I could accept that scientists in one field might make an error rather than admit that everything they know is wrong, but for scientists in so many different and entirely unrelated fields to all make the same mistake is utterly ridiculous.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Evidence.

        "they cannot accept a young age" -- I agree with your point, but this argument can go back to the YECs too:

        "they cannot accept scientific evidence, because to do so would by to admit their own fallibility and remove support to the bible that they love."

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Evidence.

        ...and varve dating. As with dendrochronology you can sit there & count the years.

        1. Suricou Raven

          Re: Evidence.

          Don't forget the ice layers and magnetic rocks.

    4. SolidSquid

      Re: Evidence.

      I've seen people counter comments about how long it would take for starlight to reach us (ie more than 5000 years) as being solved by God creating the universe with the light already en route so it would arrive here on time

  3. thames
    Joke

    Understand modern theology!

    Evolution is a fact. I know this because the Pope says so. http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2014/10/31/pope-franciss-comments-on-the-big-bang-are-not-revolutionary-catholic-teaching-has-long-professed-the-likelihood-of-human-evolution/

    Nernberg must be one of those so-called "protestants". BURN THE HERETIC!

    1. Suricou Raven

      Re: Understand modern theology!

      Most YECs are from fundamentalists churches. Most of them believe the Pope is a heretic, though they will keep quiet about that when political expedience suggests an alliance with the Catholic church for mutual political gain.

  4. Evil Auditor Silver badge

    "We all have the same evidence, and it's just a matter of how you ignore it."

    Here, Nernberg, fixed that for you.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'll give the guy some credit for handing the stuff over.

    If it was IS/ISIS they would have smashed them up.

    Whatever his beliefs he has done the right thing by handing them over intact, some brownie points deserved.

  6. TheProf
    Angel

    Food for thought

    Have they found any fossilised loaves yet?

    (Churchy Joes joke.)

  7. bob, mon!
    Black Helicopters

    The Earth WAS created 4000 years ago!

    But it's running on seriously overclocked hardware, so it's performed 4.5 billion years' worth of evolution in those 4000 years.

    Ask Neo!

    1. Cliff

      Re: The Earth WAS created 4000 years ago!

      Fair enough, 10^6 factor over clocking is easy if you also happen to control time, so from the inside it is still the same number of click cycles but from the outside the elapsed time is shorter...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Facepalm

        Re: The Earth WAS created 4000 years ago!

        You forgot to allow for Ground Hog Day, which probably took at LEAST a million years to turn a smuck into a nice guy.

        Or Political/Religious debates (and the Queens speech), which all actually feel like a million years long, even when they are supposed to last only a few minutes.

        BTW, is it it that the guy also thinks North Americans arent getting fatter - it is just that their eyes are going widescreen??

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Perhaps the guy is just really bad at maths.

    I'm pretty sure "60 million" is a lot more than "several thousand".

    Paris because, well, hardly anyone references her these days.

  9. Vimes

    Another Pratchett related thought I'm afraid - has anybody here read 'Strata'? Now I can't get the image out of my mind of a God with a sense of humour leaving a skeleton of a dinosaur buried in the ground somewhere with said skeleton holding the placard 'Stop nuclear testing!'.

    1. VinceH

      Or, for that matter (for those further up discussing the genesis stories in the Bible) a short story by Isaac Asimov called "How it Happened" ?

  10. Florida1920
    Headmaster

    Creation

    Pics or it didn't happen

    1. Sarah Balfour
      Facepalm

      Re: Creation

      That's always been my reaction when some fundie-creatard type demands I prove their God doesn't exist; if they want me to believe in their God, all they need do is take a selfie with him/her/it. Then I'll believe.

      By the way, if you think YECs are insane, you've not met the Flat Young Earth geocentric creatards. I came across one on Twitter a while back that truly believed that monkey-faced orchids proved that animals came from plants.

      The delicious irony was that one of these was Japanese.

      Is there ANY way we can stop the morons from breeding…?! And then dump 'em on a remote island far away from anywhere they can do any (more) damage.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Creation

        "By the way, if you think YECs are insane, you've not met the Flat Young Earth geocentric creatards. I came across one on Twitter a while back that truly believed that monkey-faced orchids proved that animals came from plants."

        You wanna ruin a Flat Earther's Day? Ask them how northern people see the stars spin anti-clockwise, southern people see their stars spin clockwise, people in Nairobi (just about on the Equator) see their stars go straight and not spin at all, yet all are supposedly on the same flat surface rotating the same direction with the same sky visible to everyone? Give them a time limit and don't allow them to use magic (if they insist, then accept nothing less than a live unicorn).

  11. Ketlan
    Devil

    Luvverly

    Fuck Nernberg's stupidities - that's a hell of a nice find.

    1. Lars Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: Luvverly

      Cheer up creationists with this.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6omFJhKr6o

      1. Lord Lien

        Re: Luvverly

        I'll take your Ricky & raise you Bill Burr's out take on religion :)

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7gU2XHh3SY

        Nails it with Duck Dynasty.....

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Don't be hoodwinked by 'science'

    So, most of you think the earth's age has been proven by indisputable science?

    I have bad news for you. It isn't observable or repeatable, as per Popper's definition.

    Any 'science'" that cannot produce observable, repeatable, verifiable results is a pseudoscience! Therefore Evolution and Creationism fall into the same category as Pseudosciences. Both are based on theory that cannot be proven and have no factual evidence to back up the theories. Both require faith to fill in the gaps.

    Here is a recent article - sorry it is a bit long - that uncovers the problems of radiometric dating; and how Young Earth Creationists could be correct about the age of the earth.

    http://creation.com/geochronology-uncertainties

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Don't be hoodwinked by 'science'

      The creation stories were two myths that don't even agree on the order of creation. Even if there was some sky god who created the Earth 6000 years ago (complete with a fake fossil record and light already in transit from stars more than 6000 light years away), at least one of the first two chapters of Genesis is wrong. Going forward, it doesn't get any better as you move from prehistory to history which is filled with things like civilizations in existence before and after the flood who somehow neglect to mention living submerged for 40 days. You are free to believe that yahweh (or the thetans) created the universe billions of years ago, 6000 years ago, or a week ago last Sunday during Antiques Road Show . . . just don't equate it with science.

    2. Six_Degrees

      Re: Don't be hoodwinked by 'science'

      It must suck for you, living in a world ruled by reason, logic, and science, yet not knowing how any of those things even work, let alone how to apply them.

    3. lambda_beta
      Linux

      Re: Don't be hoodwinked by 'science'

      And now ladies and gentlemen some facts:

      Popper isn't a scientist, but a philosopher. And in fact, many other philosophers have had strong criticisms of Popper and his arguments, including Kuhn.

      Popper does not say "Any 'science'" that cannot produce observable, repeatable, verifiable results is a pseudoscience".

      But he does say "A theory in the empirical sciences can never be proven, but it can be falsified". So according to Popper, there is no theories which are true, only theories which haven't been proven false.

      The statement that "Therefore Evolution and Creationism fall into the same category as Pseudosciences", is such bullshit, I don't think even Popper would subscribe to it.

      1. PassingStrange

        Re: Don't be hoodwinked by 'science'

        Pre-Enlightenment Philosophy at least had the excuse of incorporating aspects of what we now call science into early attempts to make sense of the world in which we live. Post-Enlightenment Philosophy has no such defence; it is the dry, shrivelled husk left over once everything with the remotest application to the real world had been removed, refined and and renamed the Scientific Method - a good place to go if you want an argument, but utterly sterile and incapable of reaching any factual conclusion. Quoting a "philosopher" such as Popper in support of your arguments on any issue of fact whatsoever is roughly on a par with quoting "some bloke I met down the pub".

      2. itzman

        Re: Don't be hoodwinked by 'science'

        Some philosophers have challenged some aspects of some of Poppers philosophy, but his main tenets have been upheld to be a pretty decent way to look at science all things considered.

        Kuhn is less concerned with what science is, than how it develops.

        Quine was an empiricist, and had his own axe to grind.

    4. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

      Observable and repeatable

      Take slab of limestone, measure the thickness and dump it in a river. Come back a year later, and measure the thickness again. Divide one mile by the amount that the river has worn down your limestone slab. There is a repeatable observation that the grand canyon took longer to form than the creationalists' age of the Earth. There are many, many more.

      Now pray to your God and have him create Earth V2 somewhere it can be seen with a small telescope. Give us the co-ordinates before Earth V2 is created and lets see if anything turns up a week later.

      While we are at it, why would a loving god create Onchocerca volvulus?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Observable and repeatable

        "Take slab of limestone, measure the thickness and dump it in a river. Come back a year later, and measure the thickness again. Divide one mile by the amount that the river has worn down your limestone slab. There is a repeatable observation that the grand canyon took longer to form than the creationalists' age of the Earth. There are many, many more."

        And for ANY such phenomenon, the Creationist can just reply, "God can do ANYTHING, including make something look older than it actually is." It's what's known as "God the Trickster," though the believers simply put all of them as tests of faith, since God NEVER puts anything down without a higher reason humans are incapable of understanding.

        "While we are at it, why would a loving god create Onchocerca volvulus?"

        IIRC, God only extends his love to believers and those capable of being converted. This primarily hits "heathen" territory if you'll recall.

      2. Suricou Raven

        Re: Observable and repeatable

        The YEC would simply explain that the grand canyon wasn't formed by a little water and a lot of time, but by a lot of water in a little time - it was carved out by the Flood, a deluge of biblical proportions that scoured the earth into what we see today.

        You could do much better by finding some limestone still forming and measuring the very, very slow rate at which it accumulates, and calculating how long it took your slab to form.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Don't be hoodwinked by 'science'

      "I have bad news for you. It isn't observable or repeatable, as per Popper's definition."

      I am very curious about your positions on vaccination. Do you have bad news for me because blah blah blah wah wah wa as per Jenny McCarthy's views?

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Why does God HIDE?

      If there is a God, why don't he have a phone number or Email address? Why does he hide from us?

      Seriously!

      1. cortland

        Re: Why does God HIDE?

        Hide? He ADVERTISES.

        Many believers, though, don't read those pages; they're printed on the Universe.

      2. Roj Blake Silver badge

        Re: Why does God HIDE?

        He does have several Twitter accounts though.

        1. craigb

          Re: Why does God HIDE?

          He's also quite popular on pornhub

    7. itzman
      Boffin

      Re: Don't be hoodwinked by 'science'

      Your pint is made, but not well made.

      In the end we can infer from our experience and infinite number of possible 'stories' of what the world is, and how it came to be (assuming we first assume time and causality as general principles).

      Nothing is 'provable', except from an assumption (axiom) and formal proofs are just chains of logic that restate an axiom in a more complex way.

      All science is inductive logic: All is in the limit unprovable.

      Which is why Popper is careful to show that what counts, is not truth content, but utility.

      Believing that creation is billions of divine angels obeying god's will, does not lead to CPU chips: Believing that creation is billions of quarks obeying immutable natural laws, does.

      And our support for the 'reality'; of such models as a quantum style universe rests on the fact that derivations of it when applied, work.

      mutatis mutandis both models in the limit tend to the same thing: replace Angels with Quarks, Gods Will with Immutable Natural Law, and the two statements are essentially transforms one of the other. The difference is primarily that the science is more detailed and more mathematical, and allows near exact calculations of the effect of 'god's will' on his 'angels'...

      My point being the fundamental misconception that science gives the right answers and religion does not.

      No, science gives us detailed calculable answers that work, and seem to be accurate. Religion gives us fuzzy answers that are of no practical use beyond giving us 'spiritual comfort' and the feeling that the life we find ourselves cast adrift in, has some purpose and meaning beyond a random accident of whatever it is, that is the case.

      But the demonstrable truth content of either is, and always must be, unknown.

    8. Anonymous Coward
      Holmes

      Re: Don't be hoodwinked by 'science'

      An that is a good reason to go to Mars etc and see if life came into being at the same time or evolved or not. A reason why NASA is being hogtied I suppose

    9. Anonymous Coward
      Holmes

      Re: Don't be hoodwinked by 'science'

      An that is a good reason to go to Mars etc and see if life came into being at the same time or evolved or not. A reacon why NASA is being hogtied I suppose

  13. JustWondering
    Facepalm

    Amazing!

    This story barely touches on the stupid this guy is radiating. Here's a sample from the same guy: ""There were dinosaurs that survived the flood, of course, but there may still be some around. We don't know that for sure.""

    Anyhow, he says him and the scientists have agreed to disagree. I'll bet the scientists agree he is a fucking idiot.

    1. Florida1920

      Re: Amazing!

      ""There were dinosaurs that survived the flood, of course, but there may still be some around. We don't know that for sure.""
      There are. They're called "birds."

      1. Pedigree-Pete
        Happy

        Re: Amazing!

        There are,

        She is called Nessie.

        If you believe YECs you'll believe anything. At least this belief is harmless.

      2. Nick Ryan Silver badge

        Re: Amazing!

        ...and crocodiles. and sharks. and coelacanths. However these could be explained away as swimming in water to which some great flood would likely not have made the worst difference.

  14. Madmanwithabox

    Not 6 literal days.

    Genesis is translated from Hebrew - in that language the word translated into English as 'day' means 'a long time; the time covering an extraordinary event'. It's not 6 literal 24 hour periods (which is where some get confused), it's simply a poetic way of describing the creative periods in a way that humans can understand (consider the original audience - would 'a long time' be more understandable than 'millions or possibly billions of years' to a people who had just been released from generations of slavery?).

    Millions of years absolutely fits in with the actual account if the original meaning is referenced.

    If it's taken as simply a normal 24 hour day, then the first three creative periods don't make sense, as there was no light and dark (the night and day cycle) until part of the fourth 'day' had already passed (and putting the seasons, days and years in place is in chapter 1, verse 15).

    It can't therefore be a day on Earth, as that cycle didn't exist until later.

    The word day is also relative - a day on Earth is 24 hours, a day on Venus is roughly 2802 hours. The timescale for the 'day' isn't given, but it's not based on Earth time.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not 6 literal days.

      Plants, animals, man and woman together (Genesis 1)?

      Or man, plants, animals, woman (Genesis 2)?

      Which chapter is false?

      Also, does your pseudo-scientific myth believe he created the Earth before the sun and stars (Genesis 1)?

      Believe what you want but don't call it science. Accept that the bible is full of myths which may be based, in part, on history. For example, Adam and Eve possibly stem from stories of the first cities in Mesopotamia and the Flood is probably adopted from Gilgamesh's river flood story which may be derived from stories of the Black Sea flood. Still, this only makes the myths semi historical, like the Illiad, not semi scientific.

      1. Madmanwithabox

        Re: Not 6 literal days.

        Genesis chapter 2 isn't a second account - it's an expansion of the first.

        Verse 4 specifically mentions the first creative period, not all of them (the conditions of the Earth at that time are mentioned there).

        Verse 8 is about the garden of Eden, not the overall Earth. The garden was a specific place planted after the rest of the Earth was completed.

        Verse 9 mentions the creation of animals in the past tense, not present. It's talking about a previous event - present tense is used when the Animals are brought for the man to name.

        There's no discrepancy between the two accounts.

        As to the earth being created before the sun and stars - sure, there's no reason not to believe that, if you believe in God. Heavens (plural) when mentioned in the Bible can refer to the sky - or atmosphere (Job 12:7), rather than heaven (singular) or outer space. As in 'God created the heavens (plural) and the Earth'.

    2. Six_Degrees

      Re: Not 6 literal days.

      No; it means "a day."

      It's pathetic that the only way you can defend this bilge is to outright lie and make shit up.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not 6 literal days.

      Your (and others) claims about how a day doesn't mean 24 hours in Genesis doesn't hold water under any open consideration. Sure "day" in almost any language can mean different things (day/night, 24 hours, "back in the day"). But like most words in most languages, the context makes pretty clear which meaning a word has. Most use of the word "day" in the bible clearly relates to a conventional meaning. When it comes to Genesis itself, sentences such as "And there was evening and there was morning, the first day." makes it pretty clear what the meaning is.

      1. Charles 9

        Re: Not 6 literal days.

        Furthermore, that phrase "And there was evening and there was morning, the first day." reinforces the Hebrew tradition that days don't start at sunup but sundown since night came before day.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not 6 literal days.

      "Genesis is translated from Hebrew - in that language the word translated into English as 'day' means 'a long time;"

      This is simply complete, exploded rubbish. A literal translation of the Hebrew is "And there was evening and there was morning, one day"

      (וַיְהִי-עֶרֶב וַיְהִי-בֹקֶר, יוֹם אֶחָד).

      That's about as specific as you can hope to get, unless you're about to claim that "evening" and "morning" mean something completely different.

  15. Charles Manning

    god just forgot to fill in his time sheets

    C'mon we've all done it.... made stuff up afterwards.

    1. Afernie

      Re: god just forgot to fill in his time sheets

      "god just forgot to fill in his time sheets"

      Hmm, which raises the question of who time-sheet falsifying deities get their pay slips from...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: god just forgot to fill in his time sheets

      Yup he just did the job, made up the timesheets when Maddie from accounts got on his case, and sat down with the documention guy for a couple of hours one afternoon, on his way to get a plane to the next job. No ones reads the documenation anyway, right?

  16. RegGuy1 Silver badge

    But it does prove God exists...

    "I refuse to prove that I exist" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing."

    "Yes, but the 60 million year old fish is a dead giveaway. It proves you exist, and so therefore you don't!"

    "I hadn't thought of that," God says and promptly vanishes in a cloud of logic.

  17. phil dude
    Joke

    mental illness...

    perhaps this is just plain old mental illness?

    I honestly couldn't care what anyone believes, so long as they stop at red lights...(and observe all the other important laws....).

    P.

    1. Suricou Raven

      Re: mental illness...

      I care, because they vote, and their inaccurate information leads them to inaccurate conclusions.

      "Resource conservation? Recycling? What's the point of that, God is going to end the world soon."

    2. Suricou Raven

      Re: mental illness...

      If one person believes something crazy, it's a delusion. If a hundred people believe, it's a cult. If a million believe, it's a religion.

      1. DugEBug

        Re: mental illness...

        ""Resource conservation? Recycling? What's the point of that, God is going to end the world soon."

        Funny how the people most likely to pick up their trash and to avoid wasting money/resources are those who believe in God. They also use those resources without guilt because they don't worship the creation. Its here for us to use - but they (me inclusive) want to be good stewards of what He created.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'd go with Dave Allen's account on Genesis

    https ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGASvVqzOa0

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Asimov on Genesis

    Isaac Asimov wrote an excellent commentary on Genesis, including pointing out that there are at least two creation myths mixed up in there, and the dubious translation of the word.

    My personal take on it all is that

    (a) the Bible is a book whose compnents were created by humans of varying intelligence, honesty sanity, gullibility, and political intent etc which was then collated and edited by more humans with all the same failings, and has been retranslated by further humans with all the same failings. All the Abrahamic religions point out the fallibility of humans, so it seems very strange that they should then claim that this poorly collated and edited creation of humans is the very word of God. It isn't. It's the interpretation of a large number of humans that's been poorly collated and edited about matters relating to what those same individuals perceived as having to do with god.

    (b) Creationists are demonstrably not Christians, they are blasphemers and unbelievers, by their own logic. They believe that God is omnipotent , and yet refuse to believe that God is capable of creating a universe in which the Big Bang and evolution can happen. They actually dare to put limits upon God, which is blasphemy, prefering instead to put their faith in a badly written book (see (a) above) created by humans, rather than trying to get to know God better by carefully inspecting Gods works (the universe around them) and trying to puzzle out how it all works, and what it all means.

    They are, in essence, deifying the Bible, which is on a par with deifying a statue; the fact that it has words in it makes no difference, they are both creations of man, and thus imperfect; and so they blaspheme again.

    What bothers me is that any civilised society would allow Creationists any say in eductaion given that they clearly don't understand logic enough to see the contradictions in their own claims.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Asimov on Genesis

      The believers would counter Asimov that

      (a) The books themselves may have been written by the hands of man, but each hand that wrote it was directed by God.

      (b) They are not putting limits on God persay; they can easily phrase it like this: "Sure, God could've created the universe the way scientists put it, and we are not denying it. We're simply saying God didn't create THIS universe that way. We're not positing why, just that he didn't do it that way. Sort of like how we decide one way to take the shortcut through the trees rather than the long way round."

  20. Mage Silver badge
    FAIL

    further back in time than the genesis of life described in the Good Book.

    No, it's not.

    There is no date in Genesis. The 6000 years is based on uneducated simplistic interpretation.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: further back in time than the genesis of life described in the Good Book.

      " The 6000 years is based on uneducated simplistic interpretation."

      It was actually based on calculations by highly educated people (including Newton). The problem is that it started from the premise that the Bible was the absolute, correct and literal word of God. This is basically a Protestant error which arose from the idea that an end run could be done around the Catholic Church by constructing your own religion from the text of the Bible.

      It's a testimony to the ability of humans to delude themselves for, basically, political reasons (sidelining the Pope, France and Spain.) Meanwhile in the 21st century US, nonsense is preached as better than science also for political reasons - to keep Republicans in power. Little changes.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: further back in time than the genesis of life described in the Good Book.

        And IINM, the Church basically DEMANDED that the Bible be accepted as literal truth as part of the Counter-Reformation. On pain of pain, if you get the meaning.

      2. cortland

        Re: further back in time than the genesis of life described in the Good Book.

        Ayup; "begging the question" -- with the best of reputations.

    2. cortland

      Re: further back in time than the genesis of life described in the Good Book.

      That "Ushers in" a number of criticisms.

  21. Nolveys

    The Earth was created in 6 days and has between 4 and 6 thousand years of real natural history. For the rest of the 4.5 billion years it's been out on warranty.

  22. fearnothing

    Supposing that the observable universe is, as has been theorised, a computer simulation inside a laboratory (which may itself be in another computer simulated universe), the best explanation is that one of the lab technicians messed with the starting conditions and said "ha, this'll mess with their heads".

    1. Suricou Raven

      Appropriately enough, the term 'Garden of Eden state' defines any state in a state machine for which there is no entry transition. Such a state cannot be reached during operation, but may be used as a starting state.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The Universe doesn't run on a computer, same fallacious argument as God(ism). Who created the computer, and who created God?

      The Universe runs on Mathematics, and Mathematics has no creator.

    3. DropBear
      Joke

      One can also theorise that said simulation is personally supervised and controlled via in-simulation avatars, but a few thousand in-simulation years ago the out-of-simulation Friday occurred and everyone went their merry way to the nearest pub. I shudder to think what happens once the out-of-simulation Monday arrives and the boffins get to see everything that happened to their simulation in the mean time...

  23. The Vociferous Time Waster

    Haha

    using science to prove or disprove religion is like using maths to explain cats

    1. thomas k.

      Re: Haha

      Well, cats *are* beyond our comprehension - mysterious, unexplainable and unfathomable, just like gods.

  24. Zebo-the-Fat

    Just another fuckwit

    Basicaly he is what is known as an IQ-Zero

    1. Six_Degrees

      Re: Just another fuckwit

      I'm sure he prefers to think of himself as a Six Sigma Outlier.

      1. PoliTecs

        Re: Just another fuckwit

        Yes you are...

    2. Lars Silver badge
      Flame

      Re: Just another fuckwit

      He tries to make cheep money and came to the US as he knows there are more gullible people in the US than anywhere else in the English speaking part of the world. And it's all taxfree. Start taxing all that shit Americans. When the rest of the world stopped, more or less, to create new gods and religions the Americans just continued. The fuckwit is the American education system.

      And among the Ameican politicans there are more fuckwit religious twats than anywhere else in the western world.

      1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

        Re: Just another fuckwit

        "Start taxing all that shit Americans."

        Can't, our very first amendment prohibits any interferance with religion. Taxation certainly counts as interference.

        Of course, religion isn't supposed to interfere with government, perhaps we can enact a penalty when it does and tax the living dogshit out of them then.

  25. P0l0nium

    The scariest thing ...

    The scariest thing here is that these people get to VOTE !!! (despite their obvious inability to process evidence.)

    And thus influence the choice of president who controls the world's largest WMD arsenal.

    1. Six_Degrees

      Re: The scariest thing ...

      Nernberg is a Canadian. I doubt he'll be voting for a president anytime soon.

      1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

        Re: The scariest thing ...

        Ah, but, but, but... He can vote for someone to control Canadian nukes!

        Remember, Canada has as many nukes as Saddam did.

  26. Bruce Ordway

    Creation

    These comments have made me become more interested in how Nernberg applies his beliefs.

    We've all chosen what to believe.

    I'm not sure we can tell the quality of a person from one of their beliefs.

  27. Daniel B.
    Facepalm

    This is got to be fun. It serves as proof that being a zealot on fundamentalist religious views just makes you stupid.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Correlation does not prove causality. But you are probably right.

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hitch-hikers

    I thought the earth had already been destroyed once (or was it?) to make way for an interstellar by-pass (hyperspatial express route was the correct term, I believe). Maybe an identical replacement has thrown all the dates out.

    1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

      Re: Hitch-hikers

      The mice ordered a replacement Earth.

  29. David L Webb

    Asimov's explanation

    The short story "How it Happened" by Asimov explains how the real explanation had to be simplified

    http://www.sumware.com/creation.html

    "

    My brother began to dictate in his best oratorical style, the one which has the tribes hanging on his words.

    "In the beginning," he said, "exactly fifteen point two billion years ago, there was a big bang and the Universe--"

    But I had stopped writing. "Fifteen billion years ago?" I said incredulously.

    "Absolutely," he said. "I'm inspired."

    "I don't question your inspiration," I said. (I had better not. He's three years younger than I am, but I don't try questioning his inspiration. Neither does anyone else or there's hell to pay.) "But are you going to tell the story of the Creation over a period of fifteen billion years?"

    "I have to," said my brother. "That's how long it took. I have it all in here," he tapped his forehead, "and it's on the very highest authority."

    By now I had put down my stylus. "Do you know the price of papyrus?" I said.

    .

    .

    .

    My brother thought awhile. He said, "You think I ought to cut it down?"

    "Way down," I said, "if you expect to reach the public."

    "How about a hundred years?" he said.

    "How about six days?" I said.

    He said horrified, "You can't squeeze Creation into six days."

    I said, "This is all the papyrus I have. What do you think?"

    "Oh, well," he said, and began to dictate again, "In the beginning-- Does it have to be six days, Aaron?"

    I said, firmly, "Six days, Moses."

    "

    First published in 1979 in Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine

    see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov_short_stories_bibliography

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Asimov's explanation

      Asimov had a very complex relationship with religion and the Bible, partly I think because of his Jewish background and partly because his second wife was a Mormon.

      It shows that even a scientific education and career may not overcome the programming of regarding the Bible as in some way special.

      1. Six_Degrees

        Re: Asimov's explanation

        Uh - the bible IS special. It has been at the center of philosphy and ordianry life for three of the world's largest religions for millenia, and has played a pivotal role in the world's history. It is hard to identify any book that has had such importance, or even come close to doing so.

        Not to mention that portions of it, at least, count as great literature. Go and read the Sermon on the Mount, and tell me you are not moved by it.

        I don't agree with much of what it says, and personally I'm an atheist. That doesn't stop me from appreciating the bible's enormous influence. And I certainly can't dismiss a book that inspired countless scientists and philosophers as "programming." You need to understand what you're criticizing before your criticisms carry any weight.

  30. willi0000000

    so many YECs fall back on "were you there?" when we all know they weren't either.

    then they tell me "but it's in THE BOOK!"

    and i say "it's in the science."

    and then they say that they'll pray for me and go away thinking they won.

    [i do not argue with their self-declaration of winning . . . i'm just glad they're leaving]

  31. DugEBug

    From a proud Bible thumper

    Yes, I'm one of them-thar Right-Wing Bible Thumpin' nut-jobs that most El Reg reader loathe and love to ridicule...

    My God is a God of Truth. Since He invented gravity and everything else, He's not afraid to have us take a good look at His creation. In fact, He gave us a creative mind that wants to discover and try to understand everthing around us. I don't see any reason He would make a 4000 year-old fossil appear to be millions of years old. If it is a million years old, He'd make it look a million years old! He's not trying to deceive us, because that is not in His nature.

    So let's keep trying to discover how it all works and where it all came from - without bias. I believe that the more we know, the more we will realize how amazing He is and how small we are.

    This is of course, my humble opinion, and I can't prove my point any more than you can prove that “The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be." (Rest in Peace, Carl).

    OK - I'm braced for the barrage of hate-speech that will come from all you folks who think that my belief that there is such a thing as Truth is in itself, hate-speech. Let 'er rip!

    1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

      Re: From a proud Bible thumper

      Well, one can arrive from the Big Bang to essentially today in six days, relativeisticly. But, the hardest gamma radiation since the Big Bang would make it a miserable trip, with all of those atoms phtoto-disassociating and all.

    2. itzman

      Re: From a proud Bible thumper

      Lotta faith there brother, that there is a God, and he has anthropic characteristics, has a morality and wouldn't act like a complete swine and give us insoluble puzzles to solve just out of malice.

      Can't say I have that sort of faith.

      If there is a creator, I'd tend to regard him her or it as being absolutely orthogonal to human hopes fears or endeavours one way or another. In short his attitude to us is about as concerned and compassionate as ours is to the social status amongst bacterial societies..

      However I do applaud the attempt in a universe as universally uncaring and random as ours seems to be, to persuade ourselves that human existence has some meaning beyond sheer accident..

      1. DugEBug

        Re: From a proud Bible thumper

        Yes, it does take a lot of faith to believe in a sefl-existent person who creating something amazingly complex out of nothing. It also takes a lot of faith to believe that nothing became something for no apparent reason other than sheer accident - and that sheer accidents continued to happen for billions of years, ultimately resulting in the most complex object in the known universe (the human brain).

        Neither can be explained or proven using the scientific method, so faith is involved in either case.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: From a proud Bible thumper

          "It also takes a lot of faith to believe that nothing became something for no apparent reason other than sheer accident - and that sheer accidents continued to happen for billions of years, ultimately resulting in the most complex object in the known universe (the human brain)."

          But then one could argue that if none of this had happened, we wouldn't be here to argue about it now, wouldn't we? Just as our universe being exactly the way it is allows us to exist as well. Who cares how it happened? It happened all the same. Experience colors perspective, and it's hard to picture things beyond our experience or understanding.

    3. hplasm
      Devil

      Re: From a proud Bible thumper

      "My God is a God of Truth."

      Truly, he is a bit of a git though, you must admit?

      1. Peter Simpson 1
        Happy

        Re: From a proud Bible thumper

        BLASPHEMER!

        Stone him!

        Stone all of them!

        // obligatory Python reference.

        1. Charles 9

          Re: From a proud Bible thumper

          Dorfl: "I Don't Call That Much Of An Argument."

          // obligatory Discworld reference.

  32. Flat Phillip
    Alien

    Maybe He just messes with carbon dating

    You, know like he reaches out with his noodle and messes with the carbon dating machine, or just makes these fake fossiles - pasta can be quite cunning.

  33. Winkypop Silver badge
    Joke

    Loaves and fishes

    Is the fossil wrapped in an old copy of the Creation Times?

    BTW: It's 2015, are we really still doing the bronze age myth shit?

    1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

      Re: Loaves and fishes

      Yeah, we are. We're talking about North America, where all superstitions are welcome.

      But, the Earth is *indeed* 4.5 billion years old. I was part of the Great Earth Dirt Delivery Project.

      So, yes indeed, I am older than dirt.

      I'm not older than rocks though.

  34. PoliTecs

    Typical anti religion article and yet...

    ...and yet "are believed to be around 60 million years old"

    Interesting choice of words, the word "believe". If you ate so damn sure the creationist is wrong, why use the term believe in your opinion piece?

    LOL

  35. LaeMing

    Considering the apparent mish-mash of quantum theory and the sheer scale of the universe. I believe we live in an undergraduate-created simulation. Used the entire memory space, dragging the speed of light down in the process and had to keep patching the laws of physics in a 12-hours-before-submission all-nighter just to keep it stable.

    I'd give it a C-

    1. Prophet Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
      Facepalm

      Ever hear of Eisten’s General Theory of Relativity and mathematics?

  36. Prophet Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
    Holmes

    Set aside disbelief…

    Set aside your disbelief in God’s integrity for a moment and embrace reason.

    Can you evo-creationists tell us how a live fish became fossilised in sedimentary rock and now appears above water level on dry ground?

    And what about all those countless fossils of animals, trees, etc. that clearly live on land? How on earth did so many fossils become trapped in sedimentary rock, high and dry on dry land?

    Clearly this is not a process of slowly putting down many layers of sediments over millions of years as many evolutionists imagine, is it?

    1. Charles 9

      Re: Set aside disbelief…

      Underwater mudslide. It happens. Then the ground gets pushed out of the water by plate tectonics, similar to how lowland fossils end up in the mountains. Or more likely the fish died there and silt simply piled on top of it over the eons.

      As for the land animals, don't assume the land there was high and dry during the time they lived. It could well have been semi-aquatic (marshy or swampy).

  37. Geoffrey Thomas

    Inquiring minds want to know

    why Noah didn't take the dinosaurs on the ark, the bastard......

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Inquiring minds want to know why Noah didn't take the dinosaurs on the ark, the bastard......

      Tyrannosaurus poop is really stinky, owing to its carrion diet.

      And the brontosaurii, or whatever they are called nowadays, broke the gangplank preventing the rest of the big dinosaurs from getting on board.

  38. BrentRBrian

    Bible

    The bible does not detail the events between "let their be light" (big bang) and the introduction of Adam and Eve some 6,000 years ago.

    It does mention that Adam and Eve were not the only "human like" folks on the planet ... it speaks of "men of old".

  39. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The creationist is ignoring the fact that a CTRL-ALT-DEL was issued 6000 years ago....

  40. JCitizen
    Coat

    It has always seemed very odd...

    To me that creationists bother to argue a story in Genesis, when it is plain to Biblical studies that many of the stories in the Bible are parables of basic truth. Why in earth they bother to argue against the science, when these stories are obviously representations of Gods plan. Why do they bother to judge God's methods; when many other cryptically written passages in the Bible are agreed by all to be simple symbolic languages about an over all truth? It is a fool's game to argue with non-believers on the subject, and I often wonder what their true motivation for judging God's methods is? Especially since that is dangerous to begin with! Bad enough to judge others when it isn't your job, but judging God is the ultimate sin!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It has always seemed very odd...

      I think the Counter Reformation is to blame for the most part for the doubling down on literal interpretations. Well, that combined with the Inquisition. Just ask Galileo.

  41. anthonyhegedus Silver badge

    We have evidence that a fossil is 60m years old. And yet some people "know" that they are 4000 or 6000 years old, because their interpretation of a religious book tells them so.

    That makes God a bit of a tosser really.

    He's given us not quite enough intelligence to work out what's going on in the universe. Some people try, others just can't grasp it. It makes it impossible to reach a consensus because some people are just not bright enough. The net result is that you get idiot creationists who can't and won't see reason.

    1. Charles 9

      The creationists would counter that's exactly how God wanted it. To give us room to confuse ourselves and then realize we have to accept things on pure faith, without anything to back it up: that including God Himself.

  42. Robert Moore

    My Video game theory of life.

    Life, and the universe as we observe it is nothing more than a MMORPG.

    If you look at the players, you will see:

    People who have everything handed to them. (God mode)

    People who start with the deck stacked against them, crack babies, the disabled. (Nightmare mode)

    People playing to win.

    People playing to survive.

    People playing to lose.

    People playing chaotic.

    People who cheat.

    People who play honestly.

    And like most good games it includes embedded video games. (EG: Space Quest 3 - Astro Chicken)

    Now the universe makes sense. :)

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like