A California creationist is offering a $10,000 challenge to anyone who can prove in front of a judge that science contradicts the literal interpretation of the book of Genesis.
Haha kickstarter is a good idea. Alright... I'll probably email him tomorrow and let you guys know if I get a response. I need an easy way to pay back my student loans.
The best part about this proposal is that there's a guaranteed $20K RoI.
As someone who believes in a greater intelligence out there in the universe - this kind of clown show is embarrassing. It makes anyone who believes in God look like an idiot. It deepens the divide between people over something that there really isn't anything absolutely definitive about. He's looking for some kind of 100% proof - which there isn't (and which sounds funny coming from some one who would probably tell you to "rely on faith". ) - you can't prove the creation anymore than you can "prove" that God DOESN'T exist. The whole thing is an embarassment. It's sad really. Instead of just engaging in discussion and working together to try to increase our collective, mutual human understanding, it's a semantics war to divide people and make a spectacle. ugh.
I'm a Christian, but the idea that Genesis 1 is not metaphorical is completely ridiculous. I subscribe to the well-justified Cosmic Temple Inauguration view posited by John Walton in The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate. It makes a ton of sense within the historical context of the writing of the book.
Huh? The non literal creation story is "more scientific?" I'd say the two completely absurd fable versions are equally unscientific....Mastropaolo said he would present the argument in favor of a literal interpretation of the creation story once he had found a willing scientist to argue that a non-literal interpretation of Genesis is more scientific.
I don't know what he is going for here. I suppose he wants to show that a literal interpretation is an even more difficult standpoint to argue, and then he expects to win the debate in an "aha!" moment, showing the bible is undoubtedly scientific. But how could you even describe a non-literal interpretation of anything as "scientific"? I take it he means reconcilable with science, but still, if you accept a non-literal interpretation you could potentially twist the text to mean whatever you want. It could be an interpretation reconcilable with science, but it wouldn't be a valid interpretation. I get the sense the guy thinks he has a trump card which is going to stop any argument in its tracks, but will probably be some embarrassing fallacy. And what's with the obsession with literal interpretations of the bible? I get the impression this is a particularly American thing; what has made people so defensive of the occurrence of magical tales in a book of morals?
Nothing that is not falsifiable can be described as scientific, as that is a definition. That's why this while thing is a bunch of non-sense. He's not even using the correct class of words to describe what he wants to describe. Its a conceptual error, not a scientific argument. That's why I would advise anyone against trying to 'debate' this fellow.