Secret ancient code, basis of all modern civilisation, cracked

The title is required blah blah blah

I got bored about 1/3 through the article - can anyone tell me if I missed anything interesting??

Mods - On a totally unrelated sidenote...finally figured out how to reply to comments on here - use Firefox... Turns out that Opera doesn't show the 'reply to this post' link, so I've been searching in vain for that option. Any chance of getting that fixed?

Did his ...

... noodly appendage come down and adjust Plato's writings?

That depends on what you mean by "religion"

If you mean unquestioning acceptance of a large accrual of tosh, then no you cannot reconcile religion with science. But then under this definition, Christianity doesn't count as a religion (although that doesn't stop a lot of Christians from being "religious").

If you want a definition of "religion" that includes Christianity, then you're going to have to drop the 6000 years since creation claim and the false dichotomy between "creation" and "evolution". These simply are not affirmed by any core Christian doctrine. To whit, I direct you to the Nicene and Apostles creeds (google them), which say nothing about 6000 years or the mechanism by which biodiversity occurred.

Under this latter definition, there really isn't anything to reconcile.

@AC

The biggest problem that you are referring to isn't the reconciliation of religion and science, it's the ability of people who take the bible as literal truth rather than a foundation set of morals by which they should live their lives to grasp anything which involves a bit of thought and reasoning.

The end argument that solves everything is this:

The bible was wriiten by a man. Man is inherently flawed.

To cover all bases, believe everything that has been scientifically proven and put it in the box that holds everything that is in His grand plan.

I.e. Evolution: He created the concept and set it in motion. Man was just too primitive to understand this so created stories to give his own existance meaning and substance.

Before you start the downvotes, I am, have always been, and probably always will be an atheist. I am just smart enough to see that the two sides of the coin aren't really facing in different directions.

False comparison

You appear to be conflating "Christianity" with more specific examples of it (and also some interpretations of Islam plus loads of other religions with a Creationist fringe). namely "Young Earth Creationism" and "Bible Literalism" which, to be honest, often go hand in hand (Erm, it's obviously not "Bible" in the case of the Islamic interpretation.

Just about every Religionist I've ever met has had no problem with the idea that God created the Universe to run on certain rules (God's Algorithms, if you like) which we are discovering more and more detail about with Science, and that, because The Bible was written by Humans trying to interpret the Word of God (or just guessing at it because a cautionary tale was needed) it's going to be inconsistent and not very accurate, especially in the unknown and at the time unknowable fields of Evolutionary Biology and Astrophysics. In glib summary: God can have created Evolution as the mechanism for life to be created and, yes, he can have done this 14 billion years ago and he could have sent Jebus to save us from Sin/Nokia/Toast without interesting patterns and their Christian (or otherwise) beliefs are not diminished by science and nor is the glory of their god.

So, there is no problem at all and no watering down of the deist "argument" needed in these cases.

It's only the fringe nutjobs who prefer to remain wilfully ignorant because stuff they don't know is scary and therefore a threat, that have a problem precisely because of the literal nature of their interpretation of their religion/religious texts.

On the flipside, I, as an atheist, do not find normal religionists to be stupid, close minded etc... only the occasional Creationist/Literalist. Oh, and some hardline "anti-religion" atheists. Every side has fringe elements.

Sorry, Christianity says nothing about the age of the Earth

The Pope Jean Paul II said it himself : the Bible is not a scientific reference.

Therefor, Christianity does not give a date for the age of the Earth.

Rabid, ignorant, pseudo-religious fascists calling themselves Christians, however, use the Bible as an excuse to set an age on the Earth in direct violation of the Pope's words.

Re: No problems reconciling?

@Anonymous Coward:

What you refer to is the "young earth" subcategory of christian belief, to assume they represent the total wisdom that can be derived via religion is either willful ignorance to aid your point-making, or mere ignorant asininity.

I personally might find scientific conjecture much more relevant to my scope of interest than any religious equivalent I have been exposed to, but that does not mean that I deem the two to be inevitably conflicting.

This specific discovery, however, does nothing to bring the two closer together beyond informing us that Plato believed they could be.

How to reconcile

Age of the Earth:

Both have it wrong. There are numerous examples of how easy it is to throw off the accuracy of science's best methods of estimating age so they really can't say with any certainty how old the Earth is. As for Christianity's figure, it's based on a lot of assumption and thus almost certainly wrong.

Creation vs evolution:

They co-exist quite happily in ID theory. Basically all ID says so that there's evidence that an intelligence was applied in the design of life. It makes no comment on the process that design took, and thus leaves evolution as a possibility.

Yet later entry

"Tried to tell the lads something deeply meaningful, only Judas got it."

(The Gospel of Judas is a very interesting read)

Minus the unicyle

and the introducing of gravity to a bit of S&M, you'd probably just say "We knocked the bastard off."