No cancer is a mutation of our own cells. The mutation occurs when the system is stressed. More stress and more chances of cancer developing. There have been studies that cancer isn't even hereditary. This is why the people in low population areas like in north western china live for so long. The carcinogen is a tool in creating system stress in the body. Example: if you smoke like crazy; you have a higher risk of cancer than the healthy good diet person. Not because the cigarette creates cancer; but it puts stress on the system for itself to mutate.
The field of medicine is hugely about statistics. Human trials are all about establishing a statistical link between a drug or treatment and a result. If you have cancer, the doctor will tell you the survivability rate beyond 5 years is X%. All statistics. If cigarettes caused cancer, then everyone who smoked them would get cancer. What they know is that those who do smoke get cancer at much higher rates than those who don't. But there are obviously other factors involved - like environment or genetics.
The question is to disprove Genesis literally happened. The age of the earth is irrelevant. What's relevant is if God said, "let there be light" and there was light.
All kidding aside. This guy is a Charlatan. He is only using this as publicity so his peeps will say "You fight the good fight!" and his name is in the spotlight. Jesus is not impressed.
I don't know. He may be in for the publicity or he may not. But disproving Genesis with real scientific fact could prove difficult.
I'm going to play devil's advocate here. Since there is no way to scientifically prove God exists; then how can anyone prove Genesis didn't happen? I made a joke that one could use 2 hours of scientific research to sway judges to believe the universe is 13+ billion years old; but they would have no way of proving there isn't a supernatural being that resides outside the natural laws of this universe. If that supernatural being exists; then 10k years is easy for him/her/it. They could make things happen quicker than a natural occurrence.
Proving causality is impossible except for in human-derived concepts like math. The only reason proofs can be performed in math is because we've defined the constructs. You can't prove causality in anything in physics or biology that we didn't define ourselves.
http://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialscien...ER_5_ARGUMENTS_EXPERIENCE/Burden-of-Proof.htm Burden of Proof From X, which is the assertion, is not yet disproved. Therefore, X. This is a Fallacy. X is unproven and remains unproven. Examples: (1)Of course God exists. Has anyone ever proven otherwise? (2)Of course pink elephants inhabit Mars. We don't see them because they blend in. Can you prove otherwise? (3)Of course Santa Claus exists. No one has ever proved, to my knowledge, that Santa Claus does not exist. And if one were to fly to the North Pole and say: Well, look, there's no toy factory there. A believer could argue: Well, Santa Claus knew you were coming and moved his operations to the South Pole. So you fly down to the South Pole. No Santa Claus factory, toy factory there. So the believer would say: Oh, he moved it back up to the North Pole. (4) Of course leprechauns exist. Has anyone ever proven otherwise? (5) Of course ghosts exist. Has anyone ever proven otherwise? (6) Of course yellow polka dotted aliens exist. Has anyone ever proven otherwise? (7) Of course X exist. Has anyone ever proven otherwise? (sounds like mags!) Proof of a Negative Claim So you simply cannot prove general claims that are negative claims -- one cannot prove that ghosts do not exist; one cannot prove that leprechauns too do not exist. One simply cannot prove a negative and general claim. "Negative statements often make claims that are hard to prove because they make predictions about things we are in practice unable to observe in a finite time. For instance, "there are no big green Martians" means "there are no big green Martians in this or any universe," and unlike your bathtub, it is not possible to look in every corner of every universe, thus we cannot completely test this proposition--we can just look around within the limits of our ability and our desire to expend time and resources on looking, and prove that, where we have looked so far, and within the limits of our knowing anything at all, there are no big green Martians. In such a case we have proved a negative, just not the negative of the sweeping proposition in question."-Richard Carrier, "Proving a Negative "(1999) by Richard Carrier at http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/theory.html
Just for the record, I wasnt judging Christians, I was judging creationists and even then I was only really judging the blind homer creationists. I never really understood why more christians (or other religeons) dont adopt your view point of melding science with religeon. For me it seems obvious that science has some or a lot of truth to it. I also feel that there has to be something else out there that created our universe because the big bang doenst answer all of my questions. Whats wrong with the belief system that God started the ball rolling and acted mostly as an observer afterwards, letting evolution and natural selection build the world we have today. To many religeons and people deal in absolutes and all or nothings.
Without realizing it, you're not just judging creationists. You're judging anybody dealing with science. Nothing can be proven. You can only assign probabilities unless we define something as humans, like we've done with mathematics.
That's actually an interesting concept. If a creator is outside the boundaries of this natural world; be it 5th dimensional.... He would have the capability to observe the entire universe all at once. That concept wouldn't be that unfathomable
I think about life and death more than I should, thats just one of my mental working models. I also like the hinduism model that works on plains of perfection. As you become more perfect you "graduate" to the next plain or dimension, eventually reaching the highest level of perfection which is akin to god like, making God in everyone of us. I kind of feel like most of our current religeons are outdated and based to much or race and ignorance, when fundamentally they are all more similar than they give eachother credit for.
The bettor specifies that the decision-maker will be a court judge, not a mathematician. The standards of proof are much lower. It's simply what a judge (or jury) becomes convinced of. It's very relevant. Simply prove to the judge that a 6000-year age is impossible, given that all fields of science say that billions of years were required for the history each has examined. (Religious experts say that the 6000 number is required by Genesis' list of descendants with lifespans.)
In other words, go through the thousands of reasonings by which biology, astronomy, physics, etc. require more than 6000 years. Then go through the steps of reasoning by which religious scholars have determined that age. Denny says you can't prove a negative, but it's easy. Show the conflict between A and B. Both truths cannot coexist. One is more convincing to the judge. Bingo.
