If all I ever knew were common composers of average skill and then I found a work like Bach's Mass in B minor, then the natural conclusion would be "This must have taken a lifetime to write!" I would judge it this because I see things through the eyes of common men - being I never knew of such a thing as a musical genius of the likes of Bach. Did Bach really spend a lifetime writing that Mass? No, but according to my good logic I would think it took the composer a lifetime to write something of such fine craftsmanship.
So if God is the Master Composer of all things (far greater than Bach) then wouldn't He be able to work in such a way as to make something appear to take much longer than what it actually did? Surely an Almighty Being could bend, stretch, and compress time and processes as He so desired. If 99.99999999% of all men cannot even compose as well as Bach, then isn't it beyond arrogance to think you really know the details of how the world was created?
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It was a rather baroque attempt at an argument from incredulity. The funny thing is that he's actually sort of right about his last point, except that's why we have more than one scientist in many, many different fields.
1. Fundie makes a faulty "natural conclusion" through using his "good logic," concerning musical composers.
2. Fundie then compares apples to oranges.
3. Fundie turns into a pot and meets the kettle, calling him black.
What a great argument.
The laws of physics do not arbitrarily change. Either the universe is roughly 13.7 billion years old, or God is deliberately deceiving us. And a God who wants people to believe the bible and go to heaven, or otherwise burn in hell, would be a bit of a shithead to deceive you wouldn't he?
Here we go again. "God fabricated all the evidence of an Old Earth to deceive us".
I'd love to try that in court. "All the evidence shows A is guilty, but hey, you can't arrest him on such insubstantial evidence? Surely it's possible suspect B planted it all there to make A look guilty!"
Yeah, right.
My, that god of yours is a devious one; he compresses time to fool people and does nothing to make his presence known, yet sentences people to eternal torture for not believing in him. Are you sure that's not really Satan you're worshiping?
We don't guess the age of the universe by saying "This looks really complex, it must have taken long to create", like in your Bach example. We have evidence that says the universe is several billion years old.
The difference here is that we've got solid evidence of Bach's existence beyond his musical contributions, yet all we've got from your god is a bunch of haphazard missives that don't agree with each other. Care to take another crack at that one, tiger?
-pb
Another good tidbit of information: the Mass in B Minor borrowed most of its material from cantatas Bach wrote earlier in his life time, and reworked and relyriced [sic] to create a mass. Only a few movements were originally written for the Mass. In turn, this really means that the Mass in B Minor is simply just a quick collaboration of material.
But moving on to the intended point of this post... oh wait, there is none. All life's work down the drain.
I take it this guy thinks we're all taking shots in the dark as he is.
We aren't, but thanks for playing.
Bach was fairly innovative for his time (The Well-Tempered Clavichord, for example, was one of the first pieces to use the concept of equal temperament, which is essentially the basis of all modern music, where notes are exactly the same pitch no matter what key they're in. Previously notes would have different pitches when played in different keys.) He also wrote some rather nice tunes.
Still, I disagree that 99.999999999% of all men can't compose as well as Bach. Music theory has advanced a long way since the 17th century. And your figure would mean that less than one person alive today can compose as well as Bach. Of course, a lot of this advance in theory is in the use of complex rhythmic devices, which we all know is devil worship.
To answer the second paragraph, there's absolutely no motive for God to do so. The only motive for God to do so would be to attempt to reconcile the facts with your made-up worldview. If God really did create the Earth, I hardly think the foremost thing in his mind was making sure it was done in such a way as to simultaneously confound and corroborate Invisionary's worldview. Inadmissible evidence.
Scenario, hypothesis, wild-ass guess, then you REALLY get off into the wilderness.
----"So if God is the Master Composer of all things..."
If god is...wouldn't he...surely he could...
Of course he could. Since you are inventing that superhero, he has exactly the powers that you choose to invent. But you haven't even proved "god" yet, yet you have the arrogance to jump right from "wouldn't he" to "surely he could". Stop trying to pretend that this is a coherent argument.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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