Quote:
Originally Posted by Dirkadirkastan
A theory is not a guess. It is a hypothesis that has been confirmed through sufficient testing.
The hypothesis that the earth is only thousands of years old is not a theory, and there is no evidence to support such a claim.
There is uncertainty in the age of the earth within a few million years (which is not much when we're talking billions), but the evidence is strong enough such that to believe the age of the earth falls anywhere outside the relatively small range currently held by science is baseless and irrational.
Yes, there's always a footnote in science that new evidence could conceivably come up that would challenge the theory. But a new hypothesis would have to be worked out to explain both the old and the new evidence, then be thoroughly tested before it could graduate to the level of a revised theory. Some old book will hold zero weight in the discussion regardless.
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I'm not disagreeing with you - I'm just pointing out that a majority of people are fairly ignorant when it comes to science and they take everything that a scientist says at face value, no different than how most people are fairly ignorant about spirituality (place/significance in the universe) and take everything that a cleric says at face value... A theory is not a hypothesis, but its not a law either - most people don't (can't?) make the distinction... They tend to fall back on belief instead of trusting in scientific rigor, but I guess even scientists can get sick of answering the question "why?" over and over - especially since there's more grant money in answers than questions (hello, peak oil and global warming debates?)
A potent mixture of greed and ignorance is turning science into another religion, which is diluting its ultimate purpose: the search for truth (which happens to be the same place where religion started...)
Maybe our current theories about our origins are correct, but there's a pretty decent chance that whatever the actual truth is will make those theories look as ridiculous as anything you can find in a religious text... Claiming that we KNOW anything at this point is a belief, and any responsible scientist can admit that... Hell, we don't even know how consciousness works - how can we pretend to know how the universe works??