You have enough facts to show that the Earth is neither flat, nor 6000 years old.  You could easily defeat that argument.  That's all you need to do. Why do you have go after the person, when your facts should be strong enough to stand on their own.

Blah blah blah. Scientists have been wrong in the past so they can't be trusted now. Uh huh.

Right 

You have such a bug up your arse about science, despite professing to work in the field,  I have to wonder are you harbouring a grudge because your PhD research and thesis got knocked back or did some professor steal your girlfriend?

CBR was predicted as were ripples in space time due to colliding black holes decades before they were confirmed. That's science. Name one bit of science the bible has predicted?

I'll wait.

And I love how you diss Einstein because obviously your smarter than him given you could have easily explained that because the sky is dark then that's all you need to prove an expanding universe. Where were you in 1905? You would have set Einstein straight in a jiffy.

Newton's description of the universe and equations predicting motions of the planets within the solar system were perfectly adequate for 350 years pre Einstein. So it's not like they were talking out of their arse.

And BTW the bible wasn't right for 2000 years. The Chinese, Babylonians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Aztecs and Macedonians and other civilisations would like a word.

Only a subset of Christian adherents believed the bible was the literal word of God. Most normal Christians accepted it as stories and allegorical even 1500 years ago.

Christ on a bike they knew the earth was a sphere 3000 years ago. The Greeks and the Assyrians and the Babylonians didn't need the bible to tell them that.

Quick sidebar. You seem to dismiss a lot of research out of hand as 'most of the published research is false'.

Have you ever submitted a paper for peer review and publication in a reputable journal?

Yes I'm aware of the a lot of research being poor or not replicable but have you gone through the trouble to try and have a paper published?

Blah blah blah. Scientists have been wrong in the past so they can't be trusted now. Uh huh.

Right 

You have such a bug up your arse about science, despite professing to work in the field,  I have to wonder are you harbouring a grudge because your PhD research and thesis got knocked back or did some professor steal your girlfriend?

CBR was predicted as were ripples in space time due to colliding black holes decades before they were confirmed. That's science. Name one bit of science the bible has predicted?

I'll wait.

And I love how you diss Einstein because obviously your smarter than him given you could have easily explained that because the sky is dark then that's all you need to prove an expanding universe. Where were you in 1905? You would have set Einstein straight in a jiffy.

Newton's description of the universe and equations predicting motions of the planets within the solar system were perfectly adequate for 350 years pre Einstein. So it's not like they were talking out of their arse.

And BTW the bible wasn't right for 2000 years. The Chinese, Babylonians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Aztecs and Macedonians and other civilisations would like a word.

Only a subset of Christian adherents believed the bible was the literal word of God. Most normal Christians accepted it as stories and allegorical even 1500 years ago.

Christ on a bike they knew the earth was a sphere 3000 years ago. The Greeks and the Assyrians and the Babylonians didn't need the bible to tell them that.

I don't know if there is a God, but I don't blindly believe the science either given the "evidence"  referred to is published research and most of the published research is false.

You do know until the 1960's, science was wrong about the nature of the universe and the Bible was right; for 2000 years.

In the Bible the Universe had a beginning.  It even introduces the concept of time as a property of the Universe beginning with the beginning of the universe, but also that God was outside of time so it makes no sense to ask who made God or what came before-pretty much how Hawking explains away the question about what came before the Big Bang.

Prior to the CBR in the 1960's, Scientists dogmatically supported the theory the universe existed forever and was unchanging despite not only not fitting observation but being logically inconsistent. Hell the fact the night is dark is all you need to shoot down this theory yet Einstein believed so much he fudged his theories to fit it -"Trust the experts...".  Countless people would have died believing those lies "trusting the experts and the science".

" Science changes when the evidence changes"- Yet right until that point, everyone else dismissed as an idiot.

I don't know if there is a God, but I don't blindly believe the science either given the "evidence"  referred to is published research and most of the published research is false.

I understand people want to believe in God. My mum is devout. But she also never looks too closely at it because if she did she might be in for a big disappointment. I get it, it would be soul crushing to realise your whole belief system is based on lies.  

Yes I watched that. Their answer was they hopped there.

Again I ask, does that sound plausible?

I understand people want to believe in God. My mum is devout. But she also never looks too closely at it because if she did she might be in for a big disappointment. I get it, it would be soul crushing to realise your whole belief system is based on lies.  

These would be two main organisation specialising in the topic of Creation vs Evolution, that I've come across:

https://creation.com/media-center/youtube/ct-kangaroos-from-ararat-to-australia

https://answersingenesis.org/animal-behavior/migration/how-did-animals-spread-from-where-ark-landed/

The video and article address the question you're asking. Hence, if these are plausible answers, what then?

The ones I just looked up said they hopped there and that's that.

No commentary on food, water, how they got across the deserts, how they swam the 170kms from PNG to Cape York. One hundred and seventy kilometres.

Plausible? (Remember, you said PLAUSIBLE. Another word for 'plausible' is 'credible') 

Hmmmm....not much there for a 'truth-seeker' to go on.

Do you think they hopped to Australia? Does this sound 'credible', 'plausible' to you? Be honest? 

At 30kms a day it would take the kangaroo 15 months to get there. (Can't imagine a platypus traversing more than a couple of kms a day. Let's say 3kms. That means it would have taken them 12.8 years of non-stop walking to reach Australia as well as a pretty big sea journey.) 

This also begs the questions that presumably kangaroos inhabited the middle east prior to the flood. Any written evidence of that, any hieroglyphics, any cuneiform script?  I wonder if there's fossil evidence of that? Probably not.

Do you realise how ridiculous this sounds and makes you sound. Outright bonkers. I'm not surprised you're reluctant to answer any of these questions.

Any 'truth seeker' would realise quick smart that looking at just one aspect of the story it is simply not possible for that to have happened.

But therein lies your problem. You have to believe it otherwise your faith system starts to get chipped away and then what? You start to wonder what other lies have I been told? What else do I believe to be true based on no evidence. You start to interrogate other problems that are casually washed away.

I understand people want to believe in God. My mum is devout. But she also never looks too closely at it because if she did she might be in for a big disappointment. I get it, it would be soul crushing to realise your whole belief system is based on lies.  

I understand people want to believe in God. My mum is devout. But she also never looks too closely at it because if she did she might be in for a big disappointment. I get it, it would be soul crushing to realise your whole belief system is based on lies.  

This is what I'm afraid of:

That a lie can be explained simply to the Masses in one sentence.

But explanations of truth can often take time and detail, and the Masses usually don't give you the time of day.

By you selecting a hot-button topic like "how did the kangaroos get to Australia" - you yourself can readily find articles on kangaroos-getting-to-Australia, from a Creationist viewpoint, by a Google search. (I found two articles within two searches). But you set it up so that anyone who proposes a Creation-argument is automatically crushed as an idiot, because that is your bias.

Here, Muz, I'll make it simple for you: do a Google search for - kangaroos get to Australia creation

Let's hear one then.

What are you afraid of?

But irrespective of how the kangaroos-getting-to-Australia issue is debated, it does not swing the equation of Creation-Evolution - because there are plausible explanations both for and against. Thus, the kangaroos issue is a very small-picture issue.

Let's assume the 'large picture' that a flood happened. 

I'm not reluctant.

To help you understand where I'm coming from - by nature, I am more a big-picture person than a small-picture person, so my first steps here are to establish a broad road-map.

Why? Because I've engaged in debates on these topics before - and they get nowhere, because of being bogged down in minutiae that really is not the main question.

e.g. I'll prove to you that the kangaroos-getting-to-Australia is not your main question in your search for truth. This Creation-Evolution thing is ultimately a question of whether God exists. Because the Evolutionist says Creation is ridiculous because there is no God who would ever be capable of doing it that way.

If the kangaroos-getting-to-Australia question could be answered in a methodical, plausible way ... would you then repent for your sins, and give the rest of your lifetime to serving that God, and loving that God, and receiving that God's daily friendship and loving parenthood of you?

I think not. To about-turn in one's life requires more than asking about how the kangaroos got to Australia.

Sure, the kangaroos question IS INDEED a vital component. But it is a bad engineer who starts fiddling with the parts, and has zero clue of how the parts fit together.

All I'm saying is: like a builder, we start with the architectural drawings. Like a car manufacturer, we start with the design drawings.

I am not running from the kangaroos issue. But I need to see whether that tiny element fits in the larger picture.

Summary: from the larger picture, there is a plausible explanation(s) for how the kangaroos get here. But if you reject the big-picture, you'll toss out any discussion on the tiny details.

It's like me explaining to you that, in the Pharma industry, there are PhD doctors whose job it is to test new medicines to check whether they're safe to enter the market. And in 2021, many of those PhD. doctors - whose job it is to test new medicines - were warning that these new vaccines were by-passing the usual safety standards, and that the initial data was showing that these had historically high damage rates that would never have been accepted in the past. BUT BUT BUT, if your big-picture is to 100% trust everything you hear from the TV, then there is no point arguing the small details, because you won't listen to anything that's opposite to your big picture. That is why, first, I am tackling your big picture, not your small picture.

It seems to me that you are very reluctant to answer hard questions about these things I ask preferring to engage Mono in rambling metaphysical, philosophical discussions.

I started the thread. You engaged in it. Do me the courtesy of answering the questions without sidestepping them.

I've asked you before did God make the earth to look old? I could give you dozens of examples but let's just take ice cores they have drilled out that go back 2.7million years.

https://www.science.org/content/article/record-shattering-27-million-year-old-ice-core-reveals-start-ice-ages

Were they put there by God to look old or are those ice cores fake and/or misinterpreted?

It seems to me that you are very reluctant to answer hard questions about these things I ask preferring to engage Mono in rambling metaphysical, philosophical discussions.

I started the thread. You engaged in it. Do me the courtesy of answering the questions without sidestepping them.

I've asked you before did God make the earth to look old? I could give you dozens of examples but let's just take ice cores they have drilled out that go back 2.7million years.

https://www.science.org/content/article/record-shattering-27-million-year-old-ice-core-reveals-start-ice-ages

Were they put there by God to look old or are those ice cores fake and/or misinterpreted?

Just start with one. How did all the marsupials and monotremes end up in Australia given the ark was grounded on Mt Ararat in Turkiye? 

I'm talking about people who if literally rode a rocket to space would tell you that there was a projection outside the windows to make it look like the earth was a sphere.

Those blokes.

Bear in mind, you're talking to some dude on a football website saying he has the answer ... against millions of others who make the same claim.

But if this dude makes a statement of undeniable fact, then you go with the fact, not what the dude said.

This jungle-warfare of conflicting ideas in the world -- between atheists, theists, different religions, and all the major contradictions among Christian groups, particularly everyone saying there is no way of figuring out who is accurate .... God anticipated these conditions.

God made a way to navigate all this. And it is not "blind faith". It is entirely based on evidence and reasoning. Why? Because God made us in his likeness so that he can have full relationship with us as sons and daughters. For example, I have a tremendous relationship with my dog - but there is a dimension of relationship that I can only have with another human being: conversation, sharing of deep ideas, sharing of similar emotions etc. For this reason, God in the beginning created us in his likeness, with the motive of us being in loving relationship with this God.

A characteristic of this God is that he gives reasons for why he does things. For example, if I talk to you for 60 minutes, and my reason-for-doing-things is given at the 10 minute mark - and an example of how I do things is given at the 50 minute mark of the conversation. But if we slice and dice that conversation into isolated random sentences, and do not see the entire 60 minute conversation as one unity, that is how there are so many different interpretations in Christianity.

I address your core question: why not say there is insufficient scientific evidence? I speak as someone with a degree in a science-mathematics-related field more in the industrial manufacturing area. A smart craftsman knows the extent of what his tool-of-trade can, and cannot, do. It is a daft idiot who selects the wrong tool for the job e.g. selecting a chainsaw to measure temperature.

An idiot-scientist uses scientific method for a task where science is not designed to test.

In my first science class in high school, we learned what is "scientific method" - where we start with a hypothesis or theory, then we set up an experiment to test that theory. Then, from the repeatable results we draw a conclusion. A good experiment is something that anyone else, with suitable equipment, can repeat the experiment to get hopefully the same results to confirm the conclusion. Thus, scientific method is reliant on something that can be repeated.

Even if something happened thousands of years ago, the repeatability is in the mathematics and physics that does not change over millennia.

But if something only happened once, then science is the wrong too for testing a once-off event.

For a once-off event, the method of legal and witness evidence is used.

(Even forensic science is not testing the once-off event, but using repeatable procedures - such as testing for the presence of blood or DNA - and then extrapolations are made. In other words, forensic science can only test the repeatable part. Then the legal evidence is for the once-off event).

This leads to the conclusion that, for testing the assertion of a once-off Messiah, and a once-off Resurrection, and once-off miracles ... the correct tool for testing that is not science, because all these are not repeating events. Instead, the proper tool is the legal and evidence method.

I have professional training in both science, as well as the legal side.

It happens that much of the proofs in the New Testament are expressed in legal paradigms, e.g. covenant, justification by faith, condemnation (a legal term, not a psychological term) etc.

Hence, where scientific evidence dries up .... the next step is to examine the legal evidence and eyewitness evidence.

You referred also to the divergence of many Christian groups (Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox), and other non-Christian religions. My premise is: God anticipated all that. And has made a way to navigate through the fog.

Logically, if any of them diverge on core issues, they cannot be saying the same thing. For example, if all other worldwide religions say you stand a good chance of being saved if you do lots of good works ... but the argument of Jesus and his apostles is that you cannot be saved by doing lots of good works ... it means, they're not saying the same thing.

OK, I look forward to reading it.

Can I add, however that if you are beginning your "big picture road map" from the baseline of

"Hence, the ultimate decision on Jesus Christ/God has to be based on the content of what Jesus said" is not exactly an honest attempt on your behalf to tackle bias head on now is it?  Why cant the ultimate decision (or at least a part of the decision) be based on lack of scientific evidence of the existence of either God or Jesus? - and no I'm not talking about those vulgar Soviet experiments in the 50s and 60s trying to measure the physical quantity of the soul. 

Also, on what do you base your accuracy of what Jesus actually did say? The official recognised "bible" as designated according to the Catholic Church or the Orthodox one, or the Coptics or the Maronites or (when talking about the prophesies of who/what the Messiah is) the Jews or the Muslims?  Not to mention the billions (seemingly) of Protestant doctrines? By selecting one "source" are you not guilty of practising the same negative bias as you accuse us "sheep" of practising? What ever happened to doing your own research and critical thinking?