mx5me

Has anyone seen the new Friends of God documentary by Nancy Pelosi's daughter on HBO? I don't get HBO, but I've watched every clip I could find on the internet and it looks pretty good. If anyone knows where it can be found online (or wants to tape it, I'll pay postage long shot, long shot...), that would be awesome. It seems to be along the same lines as Jesus Camp, but with more interviews. I can't get enough footage of regular Americans refuting evolution. And then, of course, there's pre-outed Haggard. (Though after 3 weeks of intensive counseling, he's declared himself "completely heterosexual".)

What never fails to strike me is the way every argument can be countered with faith. For example, the dinosaur issue. Scientists can show that fossils are more than 6,000 years old through radiometric dating. Creationists counter that they believe the Bible, and all evidence to the contrary is a challenge to test one's faith in God. There's nowhere to go from there. I have talked to people who hold these beliefs. I've tried hard to understand how this works in their minds. It's easy to write it off to brain-washing, but it's hard to believe that people don't realize the falsehoods (in my opinion) for what they are once they reached educated adulthood, and sometimes acquire these beliefs as adults. I like whydoesgodhateamputees.com. All cheeky web site name laughs aside, the site has a good forum for this type of discussion, and raises some good points. Anyway, here ends rambling. I like to procrastinate with religion when I have work that I should be doing.

ShaniFaye

can you expand on what you mean by the "dinosaur" issue?

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CSflim

Some Christians (a minority) believe that the world is less that 6000 years old and that evolution never took place. Dinosaur fossils present an obvious challenge to this belief. Two strategies are taken by Creationists to deal with this:
1) Deny that dinosaurs ever existed - the fossils were placed there by God to fuck with our heads.
2) Claim that dinosaurs and man lived side by side, and that the fossils are not over 65 million years old as shown by carbon dating, but are only a few thousand years old and that dinosaurs were taken on the ark by Noah.



EDIT: My sincere apologies, but I couldn't help including the image.

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ShaniFaye

ok thanks for clearing that up, cause I believe its older than 6k but way younger than millions. I dont be live in Darwins evolutions, but I do believe evolution has taken place, and I have no doubt dinosaurs existed and I dont know what was taken on the ark lol I do tend to believe the "sudden" cataclysm that killed them off was the flood.

Im still waiting for someone to explain to me how flying and swimming animals werent all destroyed lol

I honestly do not remember so forgive the question, but isnt there some question in the reliability of carbon dating?

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SecretMethod70

I think he did, but it essentially boils down to the fact that science can show with excellent accuracy that dinosaur fossils are EXTREMELY old (advances in technology sometimes alters *how* extremely, but extremely nonetheless - WAY more than 6,000 years), yet there's a significant minority of people (Young Earth Creationists) who insist that 1) the science is wrong and 2) the reason it is wrong is because either a) God is "testing" us or b) the devil is "tricking" us.

As for the topic of the thread, I have not seen the documentary, but I'd really like to. (Same with Jesus Camp.) Is it too much for me to hope that HBO will make it free on Google Video like they did with the documentary about electronic voting?

The questions regarding the reliability of carbon dating have been, for the most part, dealt with. In science, there are very few things that are considered "certain." This allows people who do not want to believe what science tells them an easy way out. In reality, though, science's "uncertainty" is almost always more certain than anything else. Such is the case with carbon dating. Maybe the fossils are 40 million years old instead of 65 million years old...but science can at least say with *certainty* that they are many millions of years old.

Furthermore, if carbon dating were as unreliable as those who are anti-science would like people to believe, and if humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs, then carbon dating would at least ALSO place some of our oldest human fossils as being 65 million years old.

It does not. So, it follows, either a) carbon dating is, for all intents and purposes, extremely accurate, or b) there is a vast scientific conspiracy to hide the truth of the bible by lying to the public about carbon dating findings and withholding proof that humans and dinosaurs lived together.

For those playing at home, the answer is Spoiler: A

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CSflim

Out of curiosity; why do you believe that?

What do you mean by this? What do you mean "Darwin's evolutions"? And what sort of evolution do you believe took place?

At the risk of appearing to "bat for the other team" so to speak; surely the survival of flying and swimming species is compatible with a worldwide flood? Surely they would be well able to survive?

There are a number of difficulties with the accuracy of various radio-carbon dating techniques. But nowhere near the scale of confusing 6,000 years for 4,500,000,000.

If you are interested in the details of the dating of fossils and the earth, the following two essays on talk origins are interesting:
Radiometric Dating and the Geological Time Scale by Andrew MacRae
The Age of the Earth by Chris Stassen



EDIT:
To avoid the thread getting derailed:

I have not seen not heard of Friend's of God. It sounds like it might be interesting. Does anyone know any details about this film being released on DVD? It would also be cool if it was placed online by HBO for people to watch.

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ShaniFaye

Not being a "theologist or a scientist" anything I say really wont mean anything but I thought the world was around 8-10k.

I do not believe humans evolved from animals, but I do believe humans and animals have evolved since their creation

The bible clearly states noah was to take 7 of each flying animal to keep the species alive (I am guessing the rest could not survive as there was no where for them to land). I dont know about fish....maybe deep sea fish may have survived, but I dont see how regular freshwater and saltwater would have been able to (other wise we wouldnt have to kinds of water fish need to live in)


Everything I remember about caron dating told me it was only good to date things in the thousands of years not in the millions, I believe the basic explanation was that there would be no carbon in something supposedly millions of years old to date. I've read studies where even when forensic anthropologists tried to carbon date bones they have a difficult time depending on if the person died before or after the 1950's. I've also read studies where they took something with a known age and did the C 14 test and were WAY off

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SecretMethod70

You're technically correct regarding carbon dating not being able to date into the millions of years. Carbon dating is useful up to about 45,000 years into the past. Other forms of radiometric dating (they're all popularly referred to as carbon dating, even though they are not) have other ranges in which they are most accurate. Uranium-lead radiometric dating, for example, can date rocks up to 3 billion years old with only a 2 million year range of error.

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onodrim

While this is becoming a very interesting discussion, let's try to stay on topic with the original post, which was the Documentary Friends of God itself. Since there does seem to be genuine interest, please feel free to start a new thread on the topic of the earth's age/the biblical flood/and evolution. Thanks!

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-Carl Sagan

ShaniFaye

and here I thought I was addressing the the 2nd paragraph of the OP..silly me

I have no comments on the documentary....it couldnt hold my interest long enuff to keep the channel on HBO

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onodrim

I see your point, the second paragraph does mention the "dinosaur issue" which sparked the current discussion. However, it seems that the OP was primarily concerned with Friends of God and people's thoughts on it, based on the title of the thread and the questions posed in the first paragraph. I'm not trying to discourage the current discussion, I'm simply trying to prevent the OP's main question from being totally overlooked. By all means, continue the current discussion in a new thread, I'd just also like to see that the OP gets to have a discussion about the documentary as it seems was intended as well.

__________________
"The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides"
-Carl Sagan

mx5me

I hope HBO will release it too. I think it just got aired this week. I'll keep an eye out for it. There are a couple of 6 minute clips on YouTube (of course).

When I see these documentaries, they are preaching to the choir (pardon the pun), but I can't help but wonder what the real numbers of these "extremists" are in the US. A recent AP poll found that 25 percent of those polled, supposedly a random sample, anticipates the second coming of Jesus Christ in 2007. A CBS poll found that 51 percent of those polled believe that God created humans in their present form and two-thirds of Americans want creationism taught alongside evolution. These strike me as incredible numbers, and invoke my skeptical response, yet I have personally seen evidence of a significant degree of pervasiveness of (what I consider) extreme religious beliefs. I guess few of us can speak beyond our personal experience in terms of our understanding of such things. I wish I could get a good grasp of how large this population is, and how influential they really are in terms of politics.

SecretMethod70

Do you have a link to any of those polls? It seems to me those numbers are a bit high as well. I'd guess the wording of the polls has something to do with it. Fir example, "should creationism be taught in schools" and "should creationism be taught in science classes" are two very different questions.

As for people believing god created humans in their current form, America is far behind most of the developed world in accepting the scientific evidence for evolution. It's pretty sad actually. Of course, it shouldn't be unexpected considering America also lags behind in education.

Here is a very interesting blog post on the topic of America's aversion to accepting and understanding scientific fact: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-esk...u_b_38983.html

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"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

onodrim

I too am also always amazed at numbers like that, but in my personal experience, I can believe that it may be true. My entire family, with the exception of myself, and everyone that they interact with are conservative fundamentalists. I think fundamentalism remains so pervasive, despite all the science and logic that goes against it, because of the beliefs that they hold. If one thinks that anything that they do or say that goes against the literal Word of God is going to put them in danger of going to hell, why would they want to put themselves in that position? It's an incredibly difficult mindset to break, and so they will hold on to it regardless of how ridiculous it may seem to the rest of the world at large. It's astonishing how prevelant it is, but it's understandable as well.

__________________
"The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides"
-Carl Sagan

SecretMethod70

mx5me, if you liked Jesus Camp and Friends of God, you may also be interested in the book Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement. I have also not had a chance to read this yet, but I did manage to flip through it for about half an hour when I first saw it and it seems like an excellent look into the mechanism behind creating such belief systems today.

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"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

mx5me

The AP Poll is referenced in a lot of places, here's one:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ea..._id=1003526258


Here's one of the Creation vs Evolution Polls:
[URL="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/22/opinion/polls/main965223.shtml"]URL]

There are a lot of similar poll results out there, and I completely agree that the phrasing of the questions and the interpretation of the data needs to be closely examined, but anyway you slice it, those are big numbers.

I agree, onodrim, with the explanation you give for religion remaining pervasive. Fundamentalist religions have incorporated penalties that for prevent their followers from thinking outside the box and straying from the religion. I'm strange enough that I'm so interested in this topic, I've attended an evangelical event. It's...enlightening. The numbers of people, the topics, the propaganda tactics. At least that was what this heathen noted.

That looks like a must-read, SecretMethod70. Thanks for the suggestion. On a lighter (and more offensive <--warning!) note, I recommend Welcome to Jesusland! It's hilarious, to a certain sense of humor.

Oh, and I started a separate thread for the age of earth discussion. Sorry for cramming multiple topics into one, and cool automerge feature!