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Creationist Bets $10k In Proposed Literal Interpretation of Genesis Debate
HungWeiLo writes "A California man who believes the literal interpretation of the Bible is real is offering $10,000 to anyone who can successfully debunk claims made in the book of Genesis in front of a judge. Joseph Mastropaolo, the man behind this challenge, is to put $10,000 of his own money into an escrow account. His debate opponent would be asked to do the same. They would then jointly agree on a judge based on a list of possible candidates. Mastropaolo said that any evidence presented in the trial must be 'scientific, objective, valid, reliable and calibrated.' For his part, Mastropaolo has a Ph.D. in kinesiology and writes for the Creation Hall of Fame website, which is helping to organize the minitrial. It's also not the first such trial he's tried to arrange. A previous effort, known as the 'Life Science Prize,' proposed a similar scenario. Mastropaolo includes a list of possible circuit court judges to oversee the trial and a list of those he challenged to take part on the evolutionary side of the debate."
Chapter 1 - Male and Female are created simultaneously.
Chapter 2 - Adam and Eve are created in that order.
One of the two accounts must be false - they are mutually exclusive factual statements.
Genesis is a collection of myths with no more truth to them then the parables.
Yea the first day the earth was already there and light was created, of course it was a few days later when the sun was created so where did that light come from?
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
If nobody shows up for this nonsense and bets $ 10,000, it's proof that this religious believe system is true...
The universe came into being 6 seconds ago, in exactly the state we see now, with all of our memories intact.
Prove me wrong.
Hint - it can't be done. You can always reintroduce the possibility of some omnipotent force. By carefully framing the question, proving it wrong becomes impossible. Instead, you have to unask the question. Western philosophy spent then entire last century trying to unask the premises Descartes set forth for exactly that reason.
This isn't a scientific question, it isn't in a scientific arena, and any scientist thinking they can 'win' the debate/bet is on shaky ground. Not because the science is bad, but because it isn't about science at all...
-V-
Who can decide a priori? Nobody.
-Sartre
I'm assuming you mean Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation?
I fail to see how that's any kind of proof against an ominipotent deity that can create an entire planet (and even a universe) out of nothing. Surely cooking up some uniform CMB wouldn't be difficult for such a deity.
CMB may be consistent with the Big Bang theory, but it's also consistent with a deity that wants to fill his universe with CMB for whatever reason.
That's the problem with trying to prove anything against an omnipotent deity - omnipotent means he can do *anything* including faking fossil records, making people suffer for no apparent reason (even young children), and filling the universe with CMB.
10,000$ could be much better off helping the poor. People starve to death with what $0.33 of food would nourish them. So 365days/year *.33food/day so approximately 100$ would keep someone from starving to death for a year. He could have saved 10 kid's lives for 10 years if he spent his money there. When talking of giving, Jesus doesn't want you to grandstand and boast about it though, and maybe that is all this guy wants to do.
The modern Christian's life involves working at a moral job, living frugally and giving one's excess to the poor. Jesus says we'll always have poor, but he didn't say they'll always be starving to death. Outside of horribly corrupt regimes, world hunger could be something that this generation could solve if enough of us helped out some.
God spoke to me
There's a church near where I work that has a sign in the window: "Come in and learn the latest scientific evidence for Biblical truth!"
I always smile when I see it, because they don't seem to realize they've already surrendered the epistemological war -- by admitting that weighing scientific evidence is the proper way to ascertain the truth (or falsity) of a claim.
Sure, they can fight a rear-guard action for a while by looking for scraps of evidence that appear to support Scripture (or whatever their take on Scripture is), but unless God starts making public appearances is an independently verifiable, repeatable manner, then the church has already laid the groundwork for their own logical impeachment.
The whole bedrock of religion is faith -- to believe that some things are true regardless of whether there is evidence for them or not. Once you've tacitly admitted that evidence is required, then faith is superfluous, and the church becomes just a group of extremely amateur scientists whose theories can't hold up under examination.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
fibs are often hard to string together...thats how you know they are fibs.
That's the problem with trying to prove anything against an omnipotent deity - omnipotent means he can do *anything* including faking fossil records, making people suffer for no apparent reason (even young children), and filling the universe with CMB.
Sure, youre right, but do you know what it also tells us?
That this God fellow is one hell of an evil lying monster.
Faking fossil and geological and cosmic records, evolution and tons of independent, consistent physical evidence, all for the purpose of tricking us into not believing in Him, when the punishment for not believing is an infinite number of years of abject torture in some hell that will exist for a literal eternity?
A monster of the highest order.
Abel is never identified as having a mate before being killed by Cain. Cain expressly has his own wife, though its not entirely clear where she came from, and following the chronology implied by the order of verses in Gen 4, by the time Seth is born, Cain has five generations of descendants.
The second most likely explanation is that Cain's wife was from the "Other People", the Humans "created" on the 6th day of the Genesis 1 creation myth. This would have been before Yahweh decided to try the Eden experiment and make his own line of pet Humans at the end of the second creation myth.
Of course, the first most likely explanation is that it is all USDA Grade A bullshit that never happened, and was just an attempt by primitive people to explain the world around them.
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The reason no one takes this idiot up, is because the odds are in the houses favor, and he knows it.
Never wrestle with a pig. You will end up covered in mud and the pig will enjoy it.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
If he claims creationism to be a science, then it's HIS job to disprove creationism. Not mine.
He's the one that should be looking for contradicting evidence.
Privacy is terrorism.
An applicant might methodically go through the copious evidence demonstrating the geological age of the earth is billions of years old. Or expound on the multiple plausible ways that abiogenisis (life) may have occured. Or how evolution is both a fact and theory supported by multiple strands of evidence. Or that there is no evidence supporting the biblical creation story. Or that there are many similar creation myths of which the Bible is just one.
And after this exhaustive presentation they still would not have proven biblical creation did not happen. They might have demonstrated beyond all doubt to a reasonable person that it was extremely implausible and unlikely, but they haven't proven it didn't happen. And if this "judge" is biased or following exact letter of the challenge, then the money will not be won.
Carl Sagan's "The Dragon In My Garage" essay demonstrates this point with a deliberately absurd example just to hilight the point. And contrast this challenge James Randi's $1 million challenge where applicants are not required to employ tortured logic - they perform a paranormal feat in a self evident way under agreed controlled conditions and they win.
Institutions providing a PhD in kinesiology (but not applied kinesiology) include Penn State, Michigan State University, University of Maryland, University of Southern California and the University of Minnesota, and those are just the first ones I saw with a simple Google search. In the case of Joseph Mastropaolo, his PhD is in the legitimate field of kinesiology, not the quackery of applied kinesiology. Here's the bio from his website. And in no way should my comments be construed as endorsement of this nutjob.
Good and evil are religious concepts
[citation needed]
Good and evil are concepts from the philosophy of ethics. Religions have a history that is deeply intertwined with that of ethics, as they typically attempt to prescribe an ethical code for their adherents, but ethics as a field does exist independently from religion.