Kent Hovind Gets Taken Again
Oh, this is just too precious.
The April 2005 issue of Scientific American included an editorial entitled “Okay, We Give Up” and subtitled, “We feel so ashamed”. The editors said they were contrite for ignoring creationism and ID, simply because there’s no evidence for either one.
That’s what makes ID a superior scientific theory: it doesn’t get bogged down in details.
Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our readers to present everybody’s ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible arguments or facts.
This was clearly an April Fools joke. Perhaps not the funniest ever, but still pretty blatant. But Kent Hovind fell for it anyway.
Go read his response. I’m not reading so much as a twitch on the Clue-O-Meter. No wonder he’s a laughingstock, even by creationist standards.
This isn’t the first time this has happened, either: in 1999, New Mexicans for Science and Reason awarded Hovind the P.T. Barnum Award for showing a Philadelphia audience evidence of humans and dinosaurs coexisting. He didn’t realize it was NMSR’s April Fools prank.
Anyway, here are some selections from Hovind’s reply to Scientific American. Those of you who are familiar with him may recognize a lot of it. Those who don’t will discover new depths of kookiness.
The magazine treats evolution as if it is a part of science, when there’s nothing further from the truth. It is a religion, masquerading as science. But there is no scientific evidence that would tell us a dog produced a non-dog, let alone that a dog came from a work 4.6 billion years ago.
There’s actually overwhelming evidence that dinosaurs have always lived with humans. We simply called them dragons. Man killed most of them, and there may be a few still alive today.
As for the flood carving Grand Canyon, why don’t they explain to us why the top of the Canyon is 4,000ft higher than where the river (Colorado River) enters the canyon? Why don’t they explain to us how rivers miraculously flowed up-hill for millions of years to finally cut the groove deep enough so they could flow downhill?
The simple answer is uplift, of course. But Kent doesn’t accept continental drift, so presumably the idea of mountains growing is anathema to him as well.
There’s no such thing as a “fossil record”; there are simply fossils in the dirt.
Thanks for clearing that up. In other news, there’s no such thing as the free market; there’s just people buying and selling stuff. There’s no such thing as the National Archives; just a government building with a lot of old papers.
And if you can’t get your point across any other way, compare your opponents to Nazis or Communists:
Try to get a creationist article into a magazine like Scientific American, and see what happens. Ten years ago if a professor in the Soviet Union tried to submit an article to any Soviet magazine claiming that communism didn’t work, and capitalism is a better system, he would be shipped off to Siberia if he survived. Today, if a teacher in a public university, or a writer at any major science magazine (such as Scientific American) dares to suggest that evolution is not true, and maybe Creation is true, he will be sent to academic Siberia in a heart-beat.
One thing, though: ten years ago was 1995. The Soviet Union had formally become Russia four years earlier. I doubt anyone would have been sent to Siberia for saying that the old regime didn’t work.
I can’t believe these guys think there are scientifically credible arguments for the idea that all life came from nothing, 18 billion years ago. What are they thinking?
I agree with Hovind on this point: you’d have to be crazy to think that life on Earth started 4 billion years before the Big Bang. (For those unsure of the timeline: the universe is roughly 14 billion years old. The Earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old. Life appeared somewhere on the order of 1 billion years after the Earth formed, or about 3.5 billion years ago.)
The truth is that many scientists have come to understand who butters their bread. They have to support the evolution theory or lose their grant money. Ask any number of scientists who have not kissed the sacred cow of evolution and have lost their job, grant money, or position at a university. The list grows every day. See video number 7 for much more on this.
Ah, I love a good conspiracy theory!
The Bible says, “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” Anyone who believes they came from a rock is a fool.
Hovind doesn’t think he came from a rock. He thinks he came from dirt.
You can download MP3s and videos of Hovind’s unique brand of stand-up comedy here.
Update, Sep. 16, 2005: Fixed URL to Hovind’s response. Thanks to alert reader Jamie for the correction.
September 16th, 2005 at 3:38 pm
The URL for Hovind’s response has changed. It is now at http://www.drdino.com/articles.php?spec=72&kws=scientific%20american
Thanks for your great summary. I enjoyed reading it. Nicely put. Hovind really lacks a sense of humor.
October 7th, 2005 at 9:52 pm
“Nicely put. Hovind really lacks a sense of humor.”
Maybe his whole career is his sense of humor.
February 7th, 2006 at 9:18 pm
i can’t believe how idiotic this is. not kent hovind. the so called scientists, and people who subscribe to their daydreams and fantasies as verbatim fact.
” But Kent Hovind fell for it anyway.” – he never said that he believed that scientific american was going to do what they said in the article. in fact, he never once says anything to order of “look, scientific amrerican is finally admitting that they were wrong”. there is nothing to “fall” for about that article.
“One thing, though: ten years ago was 1995. The Soviet Union had formally become Russia four years earlier.” – hovind’s comment about “ten years ago” is a figure of speech, not a date specific fact. get out of your mom’s basement, meet some people, and get a clue.
“the idea that all life came from nothing, 18 billion years ago” – he isnt refering to LIFE beginning 18 billion years ago. he’s refering to the “nothing” being 18 billion years ago.
here is a brief rundown of the evolutionist belief: life began on earth 3.5 billion years ago, where a primordial soup begat a simple single cell organism. where did that soup came from…? oh yes, it was formed what the earth was formed, by the swirling clouds and debris of elements and gasses caused by the big bang. where did that come from? all the matter in the universe (read: rock) came together and super-imploded (or whatever term you prefer to use these days), and exploded into what we call the big bang. and in another 18 billion years (i dont know the actual number that is being thrown around, so dont bother correcting me) it will happen again.
speaking of which, can you prove to me that life began approximately 3.5 billion years ago? no? can you make a time machine, and take us both back in time 3.5 billion years, and show me the beginnings of life? no? so then, this big-bang/evolution stuff is all just a theory then, yes? why then dont you treat is as such? just a theory. why is it, that scientists — who claim to be open minded (thats the point of science, isnt it?) — automatically regect all other theories that come to light? they say “these ideas are absurd, and are of no scientific value. only an idiot would believe something like that.” do they realize how “absurd” their own theories are?? scoffers = people who are willingly ignorant. in otherwords, dumb on purpose.
idiotic
February 7th, 2006 at 10:51 pm
I like this juxtaposition of “I don’t want to learn” and “betcha can’t make me learn.” You may want to rewrite this and use the same phrase in both clauses, for greater rhetorical effect.
…says the person who scoffs at honest scientists and refuses to learn.
All in all, thank you for this charming and amusing little tirade.
February 9th, 2006 at 1:25 am
When looking at the glaringly obvious mistakes that certain people, such as Hovind, have made, it becomes too easy to “write off” all creation theories, for lack of a better
term, as absurd. However, the principles of a theory that claims all things in this universe evolved into being is equally difficult, if not impossible, to prove. Unless I remember incorrectly, Darwin himself originally studied theology, not science, and I am not aware of any formal scientific training he received. I know that the evolutionary theory did not begin with Darwin, but he is generally regarded as the father of modern evolution. My point is, many regarded him as an untrained man making absurd claims and theories. In response to arensb, mocking a previous writer for the dates is petty, since many scientists disagree with the exact date, by .5 billion years or so. As to there being no proof of creation theories: in previous archaeology classes that I have taken (for the record, my degree is from a div. I, four-year, accredited, state university), a specific point is made, time after time. It is impossible, without first-hand historic accounts, to prove that anything happened EXACTLY in a certain way. What archaeology, anthropology, and other related sciences (such as paleo fields) can prove is that it is POSSIBLE, even likely, that a certain event happened in a certain way. It is also unfair to say that someone who doesn’t believe in evoluion “scoffs at honest scientists and refuses to learn.” It simply means that the person disagrees with that scientist’s views on evolution. And not all “honest” scientists believe in evolution: there are many theories out there, with many strengths and weaknesses. In the future, we all would do better if we focus on the theories, and not the people proposing them.
February 9th, 2006 at 2:54 am
I’ve never asked for proof. I know that science never proves anything, at least not in a mathematical sense. All I’ve asked for is evidence. And I note that you haven’t provided, linked to, brought up, or even alluded to any evidence for anything that supports any flavor of creationism.
Reread the last paragraph of whatanidiot’s comment and tell me he’s not scoffing at scientists. I wasn’t making fun of him for having an honest disagreement about a bit of fringe speculation. I was making fun of him for being monumentally, awe-inspiringly, Everest-dwarfingly ignorant despite the ease with which he could have educated himself, and the seeming pride that he took in his clue-proof skull. That, and accusing scientists of being guilty of his own sin.
I suppose that’s true: there must be a bunch of scientists who are utterly ignorant of biology. There are, however, no sane, knowledgeable scientists who honestly believe that evolution doesn’t occur or hasn’t occurred.
I guess that’s why you included the part about Darwin, as if it mattered to modern biology what Darwin thought.
PS: Paragraph breaks are your friends.
February 9th, 2006 at 8:14 am
In response, while you speak of “scientists who are untterly ignorant of biology”, you disregard several credible scientists who raise serious
points concerning the creation/evolution issue (for example, Martin Lubenow has a good book, Bones of Contention). And it is true that no
“sane, knowledgeable scientists” will argue that “evolution” has not occurred. Organisms do progress, or evolve, over time. Adaptation also
occurs, as everyone knows.
However, the issue is whether or not a centralized theory of evolution, that all we know now evolved over billions of years. To disagree does not make someone incorrect or utterly ignorant.
I really cannot tell you what whatanidiot was thinking; maybe he was scoffing at scientists, maybe he wasn’t. What I was referring to was the fact that many creationists follow scientific research closely; we don’t simply ignore that with which we disagree.
You are correct that in my first statement I did not provide any citations; that was not the purpose of the statement. I had no illusions
that anything I did or did not say would change your mind; you do not seem to have an open mind concening this issue
In reference to Darwin, I was not implying that many, if any, of his ideas are followed religiously by modern biologists. I was merely pointing out the fact not all those who propose theories are “qualified”, if you will–this occurs on both sides of the argument.
Finally, in response to the ad hominem criticism of whatanidiot, perhaps you take this a little seriously. “Making fun of him”, “clue-proof skull”?
Seems a little vicious; yes, whatanidiot did the same thing, but that does not make amends. Once again theories, not people.
P.S. Yes, I am aware of what paragraph breaks are; thank you for pettily pointing out that error. I correspond via email frequently, so I tend you type for speed, instead of paying attention to grammar as much as I should. However, I did not forget to pay attention to common courtesy, as some seem to do. So, in advance, there may or may not be grammatical errors in this piece. Is that better? And, in rebuttal, contractions are not your friend in writing, although acceptable in everyday speech. I may have used them, and may have neglected my paragraph breaks as
well; all apologies.
February 9th, 2006 at 2:45 pm
Jim,
I confess that I haven’t read Bones of Contention. However, one reviewer quotes him as writing:
Other reviews (e.g., here and here) say that this is a major theme in the book.
Is this accurate? If so, how can you call Lubenow “credible” or say that Bones of Contention is a good book? Claiming that ancestral and descendent species cannot coexist is just “if humans evolved from apes, why are there still apes?”, which is as stupid as “if my ancestors were Russian, how come there are still Russians?”
I’m having trouble parsing this, mainly because the sentence seems to be missing a verb clause. I think what you’re saying is that there is dispute as to whether all life on Earth descended from one or a few common ancestors. If so, then no, that’s pretty much been established. How else can you explain the multiple nested hierarchies of living beings (e.g., morphological and genetic)? How do you explain the residual telomeres and centromeres on human chromosome 2?
It’s not that I don’t have an open mind; rather, it’s just that to date, creationists have failed to present any evidence for creationism that withstands close scrutiny. If you run across any, please let me know.
If by “qualified” you mean “has a fancy degree”, then you’re right. But in science, evidence trumps degrees every time, and Darwin did collect, organize, and present solid evidence for his ideas. Creationists don’t; or if they do (e.g., the Paluxy man-tracks) the evidence doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
I’ll end by referring you to a message to creationists that I wrote a while back.
February 9th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
I apologize for the missing words in the sentence, it does make it difficult to read.
In Lubenow’s book, the point he was making with that statement is not one of the main themes; in actuality, he was summarizing several quotations from several scientists concerning basic principles of evolution. One of them is that if a “superior” species, B, evolves after species A, then eventually A will die off and B will remain. I said the book was good because of a number of issues addressed by the book. Regardless, if you would read the book, it would make it easier to comment on those issues. Quotations and reviews are not necessarily accurate.
Yes, Darwin did collect and organize “evidence”, although it was mostly visisble; much of what he used as basis for his claims was incorrect. Such is the way with science. Claims, hypotheses, and theories are made, and evidence either supports or falsifies them. Much in the way of evidence is ambiguous, and “scrutiny” can be used to attack numerous theories, not just creationism. If there was an evolutionary theory that was “air-tight”, there would be much less debate. For the record, most credible creationists don’t refer to Paluxy, although I believe Hovind does.
February 9th, 2006 at 8:52 pm
This is likely true if A and B are in competition with each other, but this is by no means always the case. A lot of times, speciation occurs because part of a population becomes isolated from the main population (allopatric speciation). In this case, the two aren’t in direct competition with each other.
If “B replaces A” were the rule, with few or no exceptions, then we’d see populations evolving, but we wouldn’t see speciation. Yet we do.
Unfortunately, none of the libraries in my area seem to have it.
The best kind of evidence, wouldn’t you say?
Okay, so what evidence, if any, supports creationism?
You’ll notice that there is no debate among biologists over the broad outlines: that evolution occurs; that it has occurred througout the history of life; that all modern species (including humans) are related by common descent; that natural selection, sexual selection, genetic drift, etc. drive evolution. If you’re interested in a list of deficiencies in modern evolutionary theory, I’ll refer you to this post by biologist PZ Myers.
The only “debate” is by people who, usually for religious reasons, don’t like evolution. What does this tell you?
I didn’t know there were credible creationists. Who are they, and where have they been hiding?
February 9th, 2006 at 9:48 pm
My intent in scoffing scientists is born only of my frustration for the dismissal of other theories. Setting aside creation, I do happen to believe there there is overwhelming evidence of a much younger Earth than is more popularly touted by science today. It doesn’t mean that it is true, but like many things it is possible. I do not have any direct links available at the moment as I am not at my regular computer. Here is an example, and while I am not “educated” with a university degree in physics, biology, archeology, paleontology, etc. I am more than intelligent enough to know that it is at least feasible:
Have you ever looked at the gutters in the road after a rain storm, and noticed the little canyons the rain carved? It reminds me alot of the satellite images of North America you see on Google Earth. Evidence? Or coincidence? I say evidence.
If the earth was flooded, where did the water go? Well, it’s possible that it retreated back into the oceans and subterranean caverns. The continents are part of much larger techtonic plates. If you push on one spot on a water bed, another part rises, yes? Would it not be possible then for one part of a techtonic plate to rise (bringing up mountains and land) while another part sinks becomming ocean? It could be that the plates were much more flat before the flood, and thus the water would have been spread out more equally. Well, difficult to imagine on a micro scale, but then again, a world flood isn’t so micro.
Also, what would the tides be like with all that water covering the earth? I think they would be huge. There would be immense amounts of water erosion, with the tides washing up mass amounts of soil into concentrated places (mountain ranges).
It would also cause the soil to hydraulically “sort” itself. More dense material would sink lower. It’s like those sand art frames you see sold in the malls where it is full of water and two colors of sand. You turn it over, and it forms layers.
Geologists have uncovered forests of petrified trees that were standing up. Why would they be standing up? If the layers are millions of years old, the trees could not have been growing through them. Hmm… I say evidence of something hydraulic in nature. How about the fossils in the layers? Well, the fish-like fossils are at the bottom, yes? Aren’t fish more dense, and would therefore sink? And the flying critters seem to be found on top. Maybe because they are less dense. Or, maybe because they drowned last.
Both evolutionists and creationists agree that there was an ice age. But the causes are only speculation. Three theories on the creation side: the massive amounts of water caused the oceanic currents to shift, causing deadly storms and freezing. That theory has been around a long time, and yes I know, they made a Hollywood movie about it. I think it’s doubtful that that happened. In Genesis it says that water burst forth from the earth. Taking this litterally, water could have shot out of underground caverns (Genesis also says that God created the earth above the waters and below the waters.) This water could have shot into the atmosphere (immeasurable weight would have been on these suggested caverns, and thus a great deal of pressure). The atmosphere would have super cooled the water mist into instant snow. Sounds far fetched, but then again, we dont know what was under the earth 5000 years ago.
The third theory would be that a comet hit the earth. I am putting this theory into a new paragraph because there are more details about it. An object that enters the atmosphere doesnt always burn up. In the case of a comet, it would surely break apart, and much of it burn up. But in the center of that object burning up, the air would cool into a cold-channel. (I’m my own words here, so please forgive me if my terminology is incorrect.) Remember back to the photos of Jupiter when it was impacted by a comet. The comet in that case broke up, and left dark spots on Jupiter for quite some time, indicating an cataclysmic temperature change, and volumetric change to those areas. So far, it sounds very unlikely. Recently there was a test performed that indicated that the Earth was wobbling a few inches. If you bump a spinning top, it wobbles, and eventually re-balances itself out. The Earth is a spinning top, and according to the formulas that the scientist came up with (based on how long it takes a gyro to re-balance itself, and based on it’s spin etc), they placed impact of something large on Earth at approximately 5000 years ago. A comet perhaps? Maybe, maybe not. But that 5000 years coincides with the flood supposedly taking place around the same time.
All of that being said, maybe thats what really happened, and maybe not. I don’t know, because I wasn’t there. I didn’t see the flood. I also didn’t see the big-bang, so I don’t know if that really happened either. I guess what I am trying to say is, the creationist theories (specifically about the flood — you dont have to believe in God to believe in a world flood) are very much snubbed out of hand and are not given alot of valid attention. Using only their analytical minds, and setting aside their biases of evolution (thats what they study, so that is always going to give some bias to their efforts), I would love for some scientists to honestly put some research into this. And not just reading white papers from creation theologists either. Do the honest research themselves, and get the results themselves. The only people who seemingly HAVE done any research on the subject is the creationists such as Dr. Kent Hovind, Martin Lubenow and the like.
February 9th, 2006 at 11:16 pm
whatanidiot:
Not only have I noticed this, I’ve written about it before.
You haven’t actually done the math on this, have you? How much water are you talking about? How many millions of tons of rock are you talking about moving, and by how much? How much energy is necessary to move that much stone? Over what period of time? Where does this energy come from? What happens once it’s dissipated into the planet and its atmosphere as heat?
In case you didn’t know, this is colloquially known as the “grass outran velociraptors” theory.
By the same reasoning, you don’t know whether your father was born normally, or emerged fully-grown from a radiant spacecraft. You don’t know, because you weren’t there.
I confess that I laughed out loud at this. The man’s a buffoon.
(southpaw: whatanidiot’s comment contains a lot of arguments that don’t stand up to scrutiny, in case you were wondering what I meant.)
February 10th, 2006 at 1:14 am
When I said Darwin used visible evidence, I was referring to his observations of external, physical traits, as opposed to things that you have referred to, such as chromosome 2.
And yes, there are credible scientists who believe in creation theories, of which there are many variants. Just because you disagree does not mean that they are “absurd”, although I will admit that the pseudo-scientists “hurt the image”, so to speak. They (credible creationists) do exist, however.
February 10th, 2006 at 1:24 am
“Not only have I noticed this, I’ve written about it before.” – Did you take into account other forms of erosions that would shape the rough surface?
“You haven’t actually done the math on this, have you? How much water are you talking about? How many millions of tons of rock are you talking about moving, and by how much? How much energy is necessary to move that much stone? Over what period of time? Where does this energy come from? What happens once it’s dissipated into the planet and its atmosphere as heat?” – It would take alot of computing power to do the “math” on this. Obviously it would take alot of force. Perhaps the force of a comet or meteor impact (craters found all over the world) while obviously not large enough of a force to move a continent, it could possibly be enough to start a chain reaction underground in subterranean chambers. Period of time would be months, and there would be earthquakes such as no body has ever imagined. Imagine the tsunamis, and add that to the theory of washing up soil and sediment. As for heat, it may have been in the form of cold, and triggered the ice age. Again, supporting the idea of a comet. Or as I said, if water shot out into the atmosphere and froze… you get the idea.
Look at the evidence for the ice age. Wooly mammoths, frozen standing up, food still undigested in their stomachs, and plants still green, in their mouths. They would have to be frozen VERY fast. In order to freeze an elephant sized mammal in for example 5 hours, it would take temperatures of -300 centrigrade. Tell me you don’t see that.
“In case you didn’t know, this is colloquially known as the “grass outran velociraptors” theory.” – Thats cute. I like how you dismiss it out of hand without thought.
Grass huh… What happens to grass when you throw it in water? It floats, yes? Does it seem reasonable then that the grass could have washed back into the oceans? Or more likely, it just stayed closer to the top and decayed.
“By the same reasoning, you don’t know whether your father was born normally, or emerged fully-grown from a radiant spacecraft. You don’t know, because you weren’t there.” – On the contrary, my grandparents were very fond of moving pictures and recorded his birth. Not that we have any equipment in the family to play it back anymore, when I was younger, I did indeed witness the birth of my father. Not something I wish to see again, nor would I wish ANYONE to see…. although a radiant spacecraft would have been much cooler.
“The man’s a buffoon.” – He comes across this way without a doubt. But if you look PAST that part, he brings up some interesting ideas. I know it can be hard to get past that though. It took alot of laughing and time, but I got over it. And now it is somewhat interesting (once you pick out the cheese). All Im saying is step outside the box, and actually examine everything. Every detail. Not, “well, thats not true because we know this and that.” No fossilized grass? What are the properties of grass when exposed to conditions that could possible be imposed?
“(southpaw: whatanidiot’s comment contains a lot of arguments that don’t stand up to scrutiny, in case you were wondering what I meant.)” – What scrutiny have you applied to them? 2-3 minutes of reading, or several hours of actual research? Did any of this stuff happen? Who knows? But for you to instantly dismiss it with a blatant “NO”, then that’s what is colloquially called “a one track mind”.
Anyways… Hovind apparently has a live radio show on his website that you can call in and… debate or whatever. http://www.drdino.com
February 10th, 2006 at 1:41 am
southpaw:
On the basis of what evidence do they believe these theories? I keep asking for evidence, and you keep not providing any.
February 10th, 2006 at 2:05 am
I can’t help but wonder why, if yeasts are now evolving, as bacteria did, my doctor just gave me the same old oral tablets for a systemic fungal infection, and how it worked. Or how, now, the doctors have any hope of using antibiotics to cure the many bacterial sinus and bladder infections out there, since now that drug resistant strains have evolved, the old ones clearly cannot exist.
But that’s really beside the point nitpicking. Clearly, fungi and bacteria have evolved drastically, even in my lifetime. As have (as any homeowner trying to use any older bait trays knows) many household pests, such as ants, roaches, and the like… all of which, no matter how odious I find them, I believe are beloved of God as God’s creation. If you find that disturbing, take your petty “Daddy loves you best” grievances up with your creator, not me, it’s not my problem.
If your God is so small that said God has to follow the rules of ANY of us down here, OR, if your God’s rules can’t hold up to the scrutiny of the brains said God supposedly created, then that God needs to be chucked, and a new one looked at. If God has to do things MY way, and I can’t allow for any other way for it to happen, I am kinda specifying God’s agenda. In that case, um, really, who’s trying to play the God, here? Yes, you could say then, I should be open minded enough to see it MUST be your way, but sorry, the brain God gave me says otherwise, and I get the feeling you’re not really reciprocating.
The problem is that if we admit we’re all descended from apes, then well, we can’t be any better than they are, can we? How can we compare to such lowly life forms as the aomeba? This all stems, IMO, from 1) an inferiority complex, and 2) a real lack of acceptance of God’s grace. God chose to elevate us out of the rest of creation, no matter HOW, and that makes us incredibly special- I think even MORE special if we consider “There, aomeba, but for the grace of God, slither I.”
Take that to your philosophy class and chew on it, get unbent, take delight in creation, and in the wonderful way God made it all work out, down to the little potassium-argon decomposition and all the other really cool stuff. It’s an amazingly fascinating universe, the more I learn of how evolution works, the more in awe I am of my creator. The bigger and more complex it gets, the more incredible it seems that I am important enough for all my hairs to be counted. Creationists: Stop putting all these STUPID limits on my Creator, making God more simplistic and less interesting. So what, you can’t understand it all. Neither can any other people. That’s the limitation of being human. Live with it.
February 10th, 2006 at 2:37 am
whatanidiot:
I’m not asking for a detailed computer model; just a back of the envelope calculation, which you can do by hand or with a pocket calculator and some High School physics. Here’s something to get you started (Google and Wikipedia are your friends):
For simplicity, assume a continental (or ocean, I don’t care) plate covering 1/10 of the Earth. You wish to raise it by 10 m over a period of, say, six months. How much work is required to do this? (Alternately: how much work will be done by gravity if the plate simply falls 10 m?)
You won’t tell me, because you’re a creationist and creationists, especially young-earth creationists, can’t do math.
Bzzt! You lose. Absolute zero is -273 degrees Celsius. A temperature of -300 C is impossible.
And by the way, even Answers in Genesis says the “flash-frozen mammoths” argument is bogus.
Not without thought. Rather, BTDTGTTS, and the idea that animals and plants ran for higher ground from a putative flood doesn’t pass the giggle test. Look at the news photos from post-Katrina New Orleans or the Indian Ocean tsunami. Notice lots of dead people, animals, and plants, all jumbled together, even though humans and animals could, theoretically run for higher ground. Now consider that you’re talking about a cataclysmic event far worse than either of those, and explain to me how it’s possible that not a single human skeleton has been found side by side with a dinosaur (not counting birds, of course); why ferns appear so much lower than grass; why Basilosaurs are never found in the same stratum as modern dolphins or whales.
So no, I haven’t dismissed the “grass outran velociraptors” because I haven’t given it much thought, but simply because it’s patent bullshit. You believe it not because there’s any evidence for it, or even because it’s plausible, but because you want it to be true, and because a snake-oil salesman told you it’s okay to believe that.
February 10th, 2006 at 10:01 pm
“You won’t tell me, because you’re a creationist and creationists, especially young-earth creationists, can’t do math.” – Is math really necessary when merely expressing an idea. It’s only an idea at this point. And just because I haven’t given you all this in thesis format with detailed mathematical results, doesnt mean that something is impossible. Or does it?
“Bzzt! You lose. Absolute zero is -273 degrees Celsius. A temperature of -300 C is impossible.” — Again, I was being general here; I was only trying to get across an idea, not a verbatim fact. Either way, it’s bloody cold.
“And by the way, even Answers in Genesis says the “flash-frozen mammoths” argument is bogus.” — Indeed they do, because elephants stomachs act as storage areas for food, and only begin digesting when it needs to. Well enough, but wouldnt that food begin to decay and rot, even without stomach acid? There must have been SOME bacteria and micro-organisms that would be decaying it, right? And the food still in the mouths was said to be fully intact, with no signs of decay.
“Now consider that you’re talking about a cataclysmic event far worse than either of those, and explain to me how it’s possible that not a single human skeleton has been found side by side with a dinosaur (not counting birds, of course); why ferns appear so much lower than grass; why Basilosaurs are never found in the same stratum as modern dolphins or whales.” — I dont know what the density of a live basilosaur is. Also, we don’t know if humans covered the entire planet either, of if they were concentrated in a more centralized area. Animals migrate a lot, as is still observed today. Before the flood, they probably did too, while humans stuck very much together for sharing of food and resources. And we don’t know the exact geography of the earth pre-flood, so it could also be that the ocean floor contains the vast majority of all earth fossils. You don’t see alot of archeologists digging on the ocean floor, do you? Who knows whats down there? I mean, it covers something like 70% of the planet, yes? Thats alot of un-explored area. As for ferns appearing lower, maybe they uproot more easily than grass, maybe they are more dense and are less likely to float. Maybe maybe maybe. Again, not facts, just ideas.
Rather than trying to find reasons for something to be wrong, why not try to find reasons for something to be right, or at least possible? I dont mean this from an evolution/creation standoff either. Just in general, “They found this, what could possibly make that happen? What else could make that happen?” I mean, how are we as human beings supposed to discover new things if we don’t question everything else around us? Instead it seems we come up with one explanation, call it truth, and drop all other explanations like yesterday’s garbage.
Either way, thanks for humoring me. It was a fun discussion, if not frustrating.
To AnneB: I don’t understand where you see these “STUPID limits” I am imposing on God. If anything, what I’m suggesting makes it even more incredible. There is nothing simple about a global flood, which is all Im suggesting at this point.
February 11th, 2006 at 4:58 am
You know, in the time it took you to type that, you could at the very least have figured out the mass of the hypothetical tectonic plate I asked you to consider. Why are you making excuses instead? I guess I was right: creationists can’t do math, not even at the High School level.
Except that this sort of sloppiness shows that you have no idea what you’re talking about, any more than if you had mentioned the 90 planets of the solar system, or the 500 oceans. Like words, numbers mean things. And even if you don’t happen to remember the value of absolute zero, it’s the work of a few moments to Google it.
What if I told you that I once walked from New York to Los Angeles in a day? Let’s estimate about 3000 miles from NY to LA. Dividing by 24 hours, you would find that I would have had to “walk” at 125 miles per hour the entire time, which is two orders of magnitude greater than normal walking speed.
So do you believe that I could have walked across the North American continent in a day? Is it worth trying to find ways for my claim to be right, or at least possible? If you believed my claim, would that make you open-minded, or just gullible?
It’s good to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out, or that someone stuffs it full of garbage.
While I can’t claim to read her mind, I believe what’s she’s saying is that you’re telling God that he had to have done things in accordance with your interpretation of a particular book written by and for bronze-age nomads. You’re telling God that since you can’t cope with the idea of a universe billions of years old, that he has to acquiesce and make it a million times younger. That you want to be the purpose of the universe, rather than just one voice in a symphony that includes every insect on every planet, and therefore God isn’t allowed to have used evolution.
You have no idea. Go read Pat James’s article, Torpedo Ye Arke. You don’t realize it because you haven’t thought it through (and you don’t know math, so you can’t even do simple reality checks), but if you think that there was a flood and an ark as described in Genesis, then you must also believe that Noah was a better shipwright than anyone in the British Navy, that you fit 3000 tons of food into a 1500-ton boat, and that evolution proceeds thousands of times faster than any evolutionary biologist would dare to suggest.
And yet you have the gall to bad-mouth scientists because they’ve thought it through, they’ve done the math and the legwork and the experiments, and they tell you that sorry, that nice story you grew up with as a kid isn’t actually literally true. Then, instead of trying to figure out why they’ve reached the conclusions that they have, you pout and stamp your little feet and say “Is not!”
Go learn something. You can start here. Try to understand why scientists say the things they do, and maybe you’ll find that you live in a world more complex and wonderful than you have ever imagined.
February 22nd, 2006 at 3:46 am
About the only thing I’ve gained for this is the knowledge that arensb is an asshole who can’t resist showing everyone what a tedious pedant he is with regard to grammar and syntax. Of course, all his grandstanding clearly displays his superiority. How could anyone pose a valid argument without perfect grammatical skills?
Better yet, why are all you people wasting your time arguing with an asshole when there might be someone who is genuinely interested in what you have to say?
February 22nd, 2006 at 3:50 am
Now, find my mistake and prove me right.
April 6th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
“Now, find my mistake and prove me right.”
I’m looking for the part where you proved any of his arguments wrong. And since those are the important bits of the discussion, and you’ve missed them entirely, then I’m thinking that that was your mistake.
That or spelling the word “arsehole” wrong.
April 19th, 2006 at 3:52 am
arensb I admire your faith in evolution. Despite the lack of evidence, you seem to make it look as if evolution is a fact when in fact it’s a hypothesis. Creation too is a hypothesis but a much better one. Evolution can’t explain the origins of life. Life can only occur from life as life begets life! Evolution seems to skip this observable fact and thus becomes nothing but a fairy tale. Unless you believe in a form of theistic evolution, your evolution hypothesis becomes a joke. Don’t tell me that scientists have accepted evolution as you understand it for that itself is part of the debate.
April 19th, 2006 at 4:24 am
I’ll ask you the same question I’ve asked the other creationists, above: what evidence is there to support creationism?
April 21st, 2006 at 7:32 am
There isn’t any. Everyone can go home now. Actually, after reading both sides of the argument, I’ve decided to believe in neither “hypothesis”. Instead, I’ve decided to believe in the “Lord of the Rings” and its teachings. It’s a book that was written before my time, and tells of tales before anyone alive can remember. So it must be true. Long live Middle Earth!
May 6th, 2006 at 6:12 pm
Paul L. “Evolution can’t explain the origins of life. Life can only occur from life as life begets life! Evolution seems to skip this observable fact and thus becomes nothing but a fairy tale.” The origins of life are explained via the theory of abiogenesis. Evolution explains how life come from life, abiogenesis explains how life might have come frome no life.
May 9th, 2006 at 2:12 pm
right now, i’m too effin tired to argue with either of your sides, so i’ll simply say that kent hov-whatever is no moron. is is one of the more intelligent people that i have seen. of course, not in matters that concern science or reilgion, but he is quite adept at maniuplation and solicitation. he quotes from adolf hitler in his conferences, suggesting to me that he has read mein kampf. he has been charged with assault and tax evasion. he runs a multi-million dollar company which invites children to have fun from his back yard in the middle of a slum, without proper permits to run the business or care for the children whom attend at a whopping rate of less that 50 per day.
evolution is proven to me by the fact that if i need cheddar cheese, and all i have is mozzarella, i improvise and make do with what i have. (now, some may argue that this is not proof of evolution, but of adaptation and to that i say: prove the difference to me)
May 10th, 2006 at 2:01 am
Clearly this is proof not of evolution, but of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, who has provided bounteous cheese to go with your spaghetti. QED.
June 4th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
kent hovind has disprooved evolution and u guys r deperately hanging on to the dumbest theory in history
June 20th, 2006 at 9:37 pm
So my choices are 1.) I came from a concoction of random chemicals that gathered together after a random spark brought them to life. And this all came from the random formation of a planet that is just situated at the right location from a light and heat source to allow that life to propogate and of course the planet came from a huge explosion in which nothing created everything which also randomly created the galaxy I sit in and the planet I live on or 2.) I was created by an intelligent being, call him God or whatever you choose to and he made me and everything on this planet through some grand design known only to it.
I’ll tell you what, when I win the freakin’ lottery which would seem to me to be a far easier prospect than being born of a bunch of goo coming to life, I’ll buy you all a car. Until then, I think I’ll believe in something a bit more positive… a supreme being.
June 20th, 2006 at 9:49 pm
You forgot option 3: that you were born of human parents, like every other person on the planet. If you want to call your parents “God”, that’s your prerogative, of course, though it’s likely to cause confusion when you try to communicate with other people.
Is there any evidence to support your belief?
If your argument boils down to “I can’t imagine… therefore God exists”, that says a lot more about your imagination than about God.
June 23rd, 2006 at 5:43 pm
Option 3 is rather unthinkable in that its obvious my parents, nor yours, created the world we live in so I’m speaking in a larger sense rather than just of myself. To attribute the creation of the galaxy to anything other than the Big Bang or to a Supreme Being makes no sense. Is there really another option? In your statement you don’t imply a third option either, you literally provided it as ones parents; as if the beginning point is simply that, your very own birth.
I think this line of thinking provides more limits to your own imagination rather than mine. Why you ask? Well, simply because you’re thinking only takes you as far as a humancentric (assuming that’s a real term and I’m too lazy to look it up) view and no further as if to say that’s it… there’s nothing else to your existence or your life beyond your own existence. From this I deduce that you are probably a humanist in your world view and its obvious you have a greater appreciation for scientific belief than theistic belief because you seek evidence.
I’ll happily admit there’s no evidence to support a supreme being who we’ll call God for lack of a better label. If someone truly has belief, evidence means nothing to them; it’s what they believe via their own rationale. And, providing evidence sounds like a court case that must be won by one side convincing the other of the fallacy of their argument and the correctness of their own. The better question would be: does it really matter in the end? From your philosophy it really doesn’t matter because you have no one to answer to but yourself, but from a theistic point of view it matters to God and that’s all that’s important to a believer who actually has a God.
Let us suppose for a moment that there is no God. Well then we have to take the natural or evolutionary explanation for the existence of all life as we know it in all of its various complexities and its beauties not to mention all of the awful, ugly things that happen to the world and to its inhabitants day in and day out. At that point it seems that life or, to put it more precisely, mere existence has no purpose but rather it is a random effect within the universe without cause or reason. That means that since we merely exist there’s no point in creating rules or social morals or standards to live by as we have nothing and no one to answer to and nowhere to go when our time is up. It also means there’s not much in life to look forward to since its merely an existince with the preclusion that it will end in your death and anything that might make you unique is simply lost to time unless you have left behind some legacy of yourself, and then again if its a human legacy how long will humanity really last… by your line of thinking.
We can presume that God does not exist all day long but our presumption does not make it so. We can presume that science is correct all day long but our presumption does not make that so either. Everyone on either side of that particular debate is simply wasting their time as there will always be those, like yourself, with a third option who believes neither is true and yet provides no meaningful alternative to explain this other option. The so-called evidence of the Bible, or of God if you prefer, is manifest in the writings of people who lived thousands of years before you and I. The evidence of science is manifest in the writings of people who live hundreds of years, sometimes thousands of years, before you and I and who continue to extoll their own beliefs.
Is science the new religion then, attempting vainly to convert new followers to its own dogmatic view? Are the scientists the new prophets who are proselytizing to the masses? If so, then who do you worship? Who is your God or do you have a pantheon of Gods instead whom you revere? How is it that you worship them and how do you pray to them? What do you offer of yourself to them in exchange for their divine influence since its obvious in your belief you’ve made Gods of men.
I ask you then, where is the evidence to support your belief? Assuming you truly have a belief. And is this evidence simply the evidence of man and nothing more? And if it is the evidence of man implying a belief from what he can observe, is that evidence really good enough for everyone?
June 24th, 2006 at 1:21 am
Far From Goo!:
You said “I”, which led me to believe that you were speaking of yourself.
Sure. Why shouldn’t there be? But I must ask: you started out by talking about either embryonic development or abiogenesis. How did the formation of the galaxy creep into the discussion?
If this is how you think, then doesn’t it follow that you’d believe in God whether or not God existed? If evidence means nothing to you, that means you could be completely and utterly wrong, and you’d have no way of knowing.
That doesn’t follow. One can be an atheist and still not accept evolution. Granted, such an atheist would have to be as ignorant as the typical Christian literalist creationist, but it’s still possible.
There are literally tons of evidence for evolution (by which I mean biological evolution; if you think it means something else, such as “origin of life” or “origin of Earth” or “origin of the universe” or “atheism”, then you’re wrong).
That doesn’t follow either. “Random” is not the same as “purposeless”. To a first approximation, “random” means “unpredictable”, and it’s clear that much in nature is not random: the planets revolve in their orbits according to the laws of gravity and mechanics, and not because there are angels pushing them along. And yet their motion is highly predictable, and not at all random.
And even if there is no grand, overarching, externally-imposed “purpose” to human life, so what? Are you saying that you can’t come up with something good to do with your life on your own?
That doesn’t follow either: just because there are no gods doesn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t come up with rules to live by. I happen to like getting along with other people: a lot of them are smart, and funny, and charming, and generally a pleasure to be around. Most of the others I’m generally indifferent to, but I’d still like to be able to walk around without worrying (too much) that I’ll be killed or robbed or assaulted.
There’s at least one hidden assumption here: you’re assuming that if there’s a god, it has to be the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god, with all the attendant baggage: life after death, judgment, heaven and hell, and all that.
But the possibilities are endless: there might be a god, but it created the universe by accident, and isn’t even aware of us. Or else it created the universe to see some pretty black holes, and the existence of life on our planet is just a side effect; there
“preclusion“?
You do know that words have meanings, don’t you?
But anyway, you’re arguing that I should believe in a god because the alternative makes you uncomfortable. Sorry, but I’d rather face an uncomfortable truth than a soothing lie.
Ditto Zeus, Brahma, Xenu, the IPU and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
That would be missing the point. Science is not a dogma that one take on faith; in fact, it’s quite the opposite.
Since I just wrote an article about this, I’ll refer you to it. In particular, see the middle section and the two questions that every scientist must ask himself.
The way you’re asking this, I think you mean “if you don’t have a belief in God, what takes the place of that belief in your life?” This is a lot like a drinker asking a teetotaler, “If you don’t get drunk on whiskey, what do you get drunk on?”
Atheism and science are not different types of religion, any more than water and lemonade are different types of alcohol.
At any rate, you haven’t given any reason to believe in your or any other god. At best, it seems you’ve said that you’re afraid to face life without someone telling you what to do. I hope you’ll forgive me if I’d rather not join you.
June 26th, 2006 at 6:54 pm
Thanks for correcting my diction. If a word sounds good why not throw it in there, I’ve always said.
I’ll let you get back to your tons of evidence and your convictions and quit wasting your valuable time then. I do however appreciate the commentary and the conversation; it’s always educational to see how different people feel and what it is they believe in their hearts.
So… like every other ignorant, Christian literalist creationist, I’ll pray for you anyway… even though you might not want me to.
June 26th, 2006 at 8:39 pm
And thus another creationist slinks away rather than try to back up his assertions.
June 29th, 2006 at 3:15 pm
arensb, have you had an opportunity to read Matt Ridley’s The Agile Gene? It’s an interesting take on the complexity of the human genome. I have difficulty reconciling the obvious complexities of what Ridley points out about the human gene with the idea of evolution. As well, I was also confused about something you had mentioned earlier about Darwin. You said that it didn’t matter to modern biology what Darwin thought. I find that statement confusing because it seems to me that modern biology might not be where it is today if not for the principle of natural selection so well put together by Darwin. His observations of the natural world are well reasoned concepts for someone of his time. I am often amused at the fact that he never obtained a degree in science and that his degree was in theology instead in the scientific field. I do feel that Darwin tends to get alot of the credit for the principle of natural selection when he wasn’t the only one with such ideas. His contemporary, Alfred Russel Wallace is so often overlooked though I can easily understand why because he so much doubted his own theories, as I understand that Darwin doubted his own later in his own life. I do not think that modern biology or any naturalistic science can simply discard Darwin. If one can overlook the racism that permeates his Origin of the Species, Darwin is otherwise a brilliant individual.
July 20th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
Creationists hate to admit this, but the world is full of evidence for evolution!
Evolutionists hate to admit this, but the world is full of evidence for creation!
This is simply because the evidence for both models is exactly the same. We live in a material world, and all material (matter) is available for scrutiny. It is all here for both sides to examine at leisure. If you are a creationist, you see the evidence as supportive of your view. If you are an evolutionist, you see the evidence as supportive of your view. Thus, it is pointless to ask an opponent of your view for evidence of his view (and vice versa). It’s not the evidence; it’s how you view the evidence.
How is this possible? Simple!
The evolutionist hates to admit that his is a faith-based model of origins. He likes to defer to science, and uses evolutionary scientists to back up his views. History records many notable scientists who subscribe to the evolutionary model.
The creationist hates to admit that his is a faith-based model of origins. He likes to defer to science, and uses creationist scientists to back up his views. History records many notable scientists who subscribe to the creationist model.
Each side comes to the table with a pre-conceived view of origin, and views the evidence through the lens of their own background and beliefs.
Can a person switch sides? Sure, but not generally on the basis of evidence. More often than not, the switch occurs on the basis of faith. When we change our basis of faith, we change our view of the evidence. And by the way—it goes both ways. Some have changed from evolutionist to creationist; some have gone the other way.
Which am I? Doesn’t matter. If I were to say, you would immediately invalidate my view. Let’s just think about what I’ve said, and let that be a matter of discussion!
July 20th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
Can you please provide the creationist explanation for the multiple nested hierarchies observed in nature? What about homologies? The lack of mammals with feathers? Just to name a few.
“God did it” or “God wanted it that way”, since it explains everything (it handles both the existence and nonexistence of centaurs equally well), and therefore explains nothing.
In the same way that a Fortune 500 CEO hates to admit that he runs a charity: it just isn’t true.
Evolution is science, and science is based on doubt: experimental facts are considered in doubt until they’re replicated by someone else, preferably by several other teams. Articles are submitted anonymously to reviewers (to help prevent the reviewers from privileging famous or popular researchers at the expense of unknown ones) before publication.
Heck, even as we speak, I’m running some computer simulations because I didn’t want to take someone else’s word for the power of natural selection. If you want a copy of the code, let me know and I’ll share. If you find any bugs, I’ll be glad of it.
More importantly, evolution produces results: Tiktaalik was discovered in the place it was predicted to be found, using results from paleontology and geology. When’s the last time creationism advanced human knowledge?
How many of them work or worked after the publication of The Origin of the Species? How many of them are biologists? How many are named Steve?
I’ll defer to Glenn Morton, a geologist in the oil industry, who used to be a young-earth creationist, and wrote “research” papers for ICR:
Can you name anyone who understood the theory of evolution and was familiar with the evidence for it who switched to creationism?
The fact that you think evolution is faith-based says that you don’t know what it is, or how science works, or what the evidence for evolution and common descent is. Your performance here is on a par with someone who says, “Sure, this Republican administration got us into a pointless war in Iraq, but the Democrats want to confiscate everyone’s property and strangle kittens. Betcha can’t guess which party I’m in!”
But hey, I’m open to the possibility that creationism might be true. If you have any evidence for it, why don’t you bring it out and show us?
I also strongly suggest that you learn what evolution is, so that you don’t make a fool of yourself by misrepresenting it. Call it “know thy enemy” if you like.
July 23rd, 2006 at 11:43 pm
Of all of Kent Hovind’s intellectual sins, his biggest is stating that evolution is a religion. I am a practicing Christian. I beileve in God. I don’t “believe” in evolution; it is merely the scientific theory that most credibly explains the origin of life. Kent Hovind would tell me that I do not believe in God, since I “believe” in evolution. What gall he has to tell other people what they do and do not believe!
Science and religion can coexist. Science is based on doubt (as arensb said), and religion is based on faith. Science will never “kill” religion. No matter how far science goes into understanding the nature of life, the universe, or even the multiverse, God still can (and I believe does) exist on a level never accessible to science. This does not marginalize science for people of faith, rather it makes science an integral part of understanding God’s Creation.
Furthermore, I think creationism, not the theory of evolution, degrades the Supreme Being. To say, “Oh, God couldn’t have done it that way, it’s not it Bible,” is to impose human restrictions on God. The Supreme Being could have made things literally the way it is described in Genesis if it wished, but the evidence clearly doesn’t point to that. To ignore emperical evidence in order to believe two parables (the first developed to counter the Babalonian creation myth and the second to teach about humanity’s chosen fall from grace) on a literal level is not only bad science, but bad theology.
If creationists like Kent Hovind would realize that understanding the thoery of evolution and believing in God are not mutually exclusive, and if they truly examined the evidence for evolution, without the agenda of proving a coulple of parables to be historically and scienctifically correct, I think they would understand evolution as the best thoery for biogenesis.
July 24th, 2006 at 8:38 pm
Ummm. I’m not trying to be difficult here, arensb, but you never answered my earlier questions. See above comment from “crew” dated 6/29. Any insight or comments you might have is most appreciated. Thank you.
July 24th, 2006 at 10:27 pm
crew:
Sorry about that. Your message fell off of the current page in my mail inbox, and I forgot.
Sorry, no. I’ve read his Genome, though.
Why? Is it just “I can’t imagine that all of this could have happened naturally”? If so, you may want to consider whether the problem lies in your imagination. Personally, I find that my intuition doesn’t work very well in many areas. That’s why I prefer to see what the data say.
At any rate, complexity of the type that we see in nature is an argument against intelligent design. A good design is one that is simple. For instance, compare Google to the Windows search utility. Henry Ford revolutionized manufacturing by introducing the assembly line, a drastic simplification from earlier, more “artisanal” manufacturing methods. (Obviously, it still has to work. A simple design that doesn’t work is a bad design.)
In living beings, we see all sorts of unnecessary complexity: redundant genes, genes that need to be spliced together from different introns, genes that control multiple unrelated systems (e.g., the distal-less gene in certain butterflies controls both the edge of the wing, and eyespots in the middle of wings. PZ Myers has an interesting post that shows that a lot of the genes used in the development of arms and legs are also used in the development of penises and clitorises. If you’ve read Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box, he’s provided examples of complicated molecular pathways.
These are signs not of a brilliant designer who could hold in his mind the intricate dance that these thousands of molecules would execute, but rather of a blind process that’ll use anything available, no matter how stupid, as long as it works, and then propagates its “decisions” to the next generation.
September 12th, 2006 at 8:19 pm
This thread has been most interesting. I’ve been reluctant to add my opinion, because I know how much both sides of this issue are going to hate me. Evolutionists are going to hate me because I believe in a six day creation, involving a Creator. Creationists, on the other hand, are going to hate me because I will freely say that the pulpits of America’s churches are filled, for the most part, with yellow bellied gutless wonders: hypocrites that shop around for a church that gives the best salary and health benefits, then preach sermons on living by faith (to pick on just one issue, out of many). I cannot condemn anyone who choses the Theory of Evolution as a saner alternative.
I have no problem with the Theory of Evolution being taught or believed. I simply believe that there is an alternative, and the alternative is true. The alternative is that God created the universe. This world is well designed. Where ever their is a design, there needs to be a designer. A single human cell is incredibly complex. More complex than a space shuttle. If a human cell evolved, then why didn’t other, simpler things evolve, like windup wrist watches? I firmly believe that if evolution was true, we’d be digging up wrist watches all the time: why not, as metal doesn’t break down quite as quickly as flesh.
Scientific facts, such as the second law of thermodynamics, show me that I was indeed created. If there was not a system in place that blocked, or slowed down, the second law of thermodynamics on our bodies, we would all cease to exist. For evolution to be true, not only would substances have to evolve, a system would have to evolve along with it that would prevent the substances from break down immediately. The system and the substance evolving at the same time at the same place is totally improbable . Compute that.
Some people refuse to believe in God until they see hard proof of his existence, such as photographs, or other physical evidence. This is not a logical position: basically saying that if science can’t prove it, then it can’t be true. This is not reasonable, and I will not believe something that is unreasonable.
September 12th, 2006 at 10:44 pm
proclaimliberty:
Because wristwatches don’t reproduce. If they made copies of themselves with less than 100% accuracy, they would.
You’re using Paley’s watchmaker argument, which is basically “I can’t imagine how this could have happened naturally, therefore God was involved.” But the universe isn’t limited by your imagination. I suggest you read Richard Dawkins’s The Blind Watchmaker, which addresses this very question.
No, they don’t. Whoever told you that was either misinformed or lying.
You seem to have a lot of misconceptions about science in general, and evolution in particular. I suggest that you browse the Index to Creationist Claims, which may dispel a lot of your misconceptions.
This is a misrepresentation of the skeptic’s position.
Tell me: do you believe that there is a teapot orbiting Neptune? Do you believe that there’s an invisible pink unicorn in my back yard? Do you believe in Zeus, Shiva, or Thor? Do you believe that Dionysus died and was reborn?
If you’re a normal intelligent person, you don’t, because you’ve never seen any good evidence for these things. And even if you’re willing to consider the possibility that they might be true, you don’t live your life as if they were real possibilities: you don’t dress like a pirate just in case the Flying Spaghetti Monster really exists, right?
So given that there’s no good evidence for the existence of any god (if there were, apologeticists would’ve told us by now), why believe in any of them? (And please don’t say Pascal’s Wager.)
September 20th, 2006 at 10:13 am
It is pretty funny, I mean you guys had to start a website to make fun of a good guy because you are scared… scared that he might be right; scared that there is a God who made everything like the Bible says, and one day you will have to answer to Him for the things you have done. Not to mention you have nothing better to do with your time than talk about there being no meaning to life (that’s pretty depressing). Tell me, why even fight I.D. and creationism if when you die in a few years you’ll just go back to nothingness. Someone or something had to create a beginning. Think about it, who made the Laws of the universe(gravity, thermodynamics, etc.), how did O2 come aboutW/out which nothing can survive,and how could anything create itself spontaniously out of nothing, grow, find food and reproduce itself? how did fish survive before they “evolved” gills? The truth is your religeon(you have to believe there is no God, there is no way to know that) is no different than mine, except i have peace and reassurance that Jesus is God and He died for my and your sins. All we need to do is believe He is God and He will save us. Read Romans 3:23 6:23, John 3:16 and romans 10:13.
If you pride yourselves in being open-minded check into these verses and decide for yourself, because i was a loser once, but i found a Savior who loves me no matter what. P.S. i know you will want to delete this opinion because it’s something you don’t agree with, but don’t do it. let other people think for themselves. if what i believe is so dumb that noone with intelligent thought would ever believe it, what will it hurt? Dr.C
September 20th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
Dr. Clayton:
Here’s an atheism FAQ. And here’s Mark Isaak’s Index of Creationist Claims.
Go learn. Come back when you have a comment that hasn’t been refuted a thousand times yet.
September 21st, 2006 at 9:18 pm
this is very simple….it takes more faith to believe that nothing created everything than to believe that God created everything. the laws of thermodynamics tell us that it is impossible for something to come from nothing. there are cells in our bodies that look and run like motors. its absolutly amazing. if you were to remove or alter just one part of the cell, we would not be able to exist. so how in the world could a monkey turn into a human? how in the world could a species survive if its building blocks are changed? alot of time is never a good thing. things get worse never better. should i expect to start changing into a super human soon or some really intelligent gorilla? seriously! there must be some animal somewhere in the world that is changing into something else before our eyes. i guess we were just born from nothing at the wrong time. we all come from a rock i guess. or a rat. we came from nothing and we are going to nothing. oh i praise you nothing! you are so quite and wonderful. your non-existence is so rewarding in my life. thank you for sending that big bang that you created. i praise you for that rock that you directed towards that ball in the vast nothingness that you created from your vast knowledge of all things,which came from you. oh nothing, you are worthy of honor. for by the rat you eventually made me. im so glad i was made in the image of your monkey. thank you nothing. GOD MADE YOU,HE KNEW YOU BEFORE YOU WERE BORN. HE FORMED YOU IN YOUR MOTHERS WOMB. YOU ARE FEARLESSLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE(PSALM 39)WE ARE THE ONLY ONES ON EARTH THAT HAVE BEEN MADE IN HIS IMAGE. WE ARE THE ONLY ONES WHO CAN WORSHIP HIM. WE HAVE ALL FALLEN SHORT BEFORE GOD. NOONE IS RIGHTEOUS,NOT EVEN ONE. I HEAR PEOPLE SAY EMBRACE YOUR OWN TRUTH,BE TRUE TO YOURSELF. THERE IS ONLY ONE TRUTH AND HIS NAME IS JESUS CHRIST. BLUDGEONED TO DEATH TO BRING YOU TO GOD. FORGIVENESS IS AVAILABLE FOR EVERY MAN WOMAN AND CHILD ON EARTH. NO MATTER WHAT YOU HAVE DONE. IF YOU EXCEPT THE ATONING SACRAFICE OF jESUS CHRIST AND PUT YOUR TRUST IN HIM AND TURN FROM YOUR SIN, THE BIBLE SAYS YOU ARE SEALED WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT, AND ETERNAL LIFE AWAITS YOU. BE WARNED NOW WHOEVER IS READING THIS…NOW YOU ARE WITHOUT EXUSE. YOU HAVE HEARD THE GOSPEL MESSAGE. I PRAY MOST EARNESTLY THAT YOU RESPOND. ITS NOT BY CHANCE THAT YOU ARE READING THIS. gOD BLESS YOU OR…..NOTHING BLESS YOU. YOU DECIDE
September 22nd, 2006 at 12:34 am
Greg:
I’m afraid you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you to unlearn all of the nonsense you got from Hovind. You can start here.
Learn, and then come back if you have any substantial comments or questions. But leave the strawmen at home, m’kay?
October 17th, 2006 at 11:01 pm
arensb:
This has been a fascinating read thus far. I am curious however about the big bang theory. Did everything come from nothing? Is this phenomenon observable, since science is all about what is observable. If all of the matter in the universe did not come from nothing, where do scientists suppose it came from? Where do YOU suppose it came from? Can you please provide evidence to irrefutably substantiate your claims in this matter? I know you ask this of Creationists, but are you exempt from providing evidence to support your claims?
“You forgot option 3: that you were born of human parents, like every other person on the planet.” Is that the chicken, or the egg? Because that smells like chicken to me, and according to that statement by yourself, it’s poultry to you as well.
Finally, how did you like my use of big words? I know how much you like to use them, perhaps in an effort to make yourself seem more intelligent, and superior. To all of the followers of the church of evolution, go forth and give the Earth a nice hug! After all, it is your ancestor!
October 17th, 2006 at 11:44 pm
evian wrote:
No, you’re not. That “I’m curious” nonsense is just a rhetorical device to allow you to pretend that you’re not just trying to score points by repeating tired old creationist talking points.
If you were really interested in the Big Bang, you’d read one or two of the many fine science books on the subject written for laymen.
Yes, but not the way that you mean: scientists can’t create a Big Bang in a test tube, or travel back in time to take color pictures. Then again the war of 1812 isn’t observable in that sense, but we have plenty of evidence that both the war of 1812 and the Big Bang happened.
To begin with, there’s Hubble’s observation that the universe is expanding, which implied that everything used to be much closer together than it is now. Then there’s Penzias and Wilson’s discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which had been predicted as a consequence of a singularity. If you check the science news, you’ll see that in the past few months astronomers have made new discoveries that shed more light on the Big Bang.
I don’t know. Why don’t you ask them?
I’m pretty sure, though, that if you do, they’ll tell you that the way you’ve phrased it is an oversimplification. I don’t claim to know what happened in the first few instants after the Big Bang, but I do know that matter behaves in funky waves at those temperatures and densities, and at those scales. This may be, in fact, one of those times when relativity (the physics of the very big, very massive, and very fast) and quantum mechanics (the physics of the very very small) both apply, and give inconsistent results.
Neither. Far From Goo was asking where he, personally, came from. I can only assume that he’s a human, and not a chicken, so I gave an answer appropriate to humans.
Eh? What big words?
Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I use whichever word is most appropriate in a given context? If I use a word you’re not familiar with, you can look it up in a dictionary.
WTF are you talking about?
Seriously, do you really believe that anyone actually believes the strawman caricature of evolution that you’ve just presented? Do you really think that every biologist on the planet is a blithering moron?
October 30th, 2006 at 11:08 am
I have just seen this web site, with the usual assortment of strawmen and misinformation from the creationists, together with their complete inability to actually present anything in support for their views (and I don’t want to hear a reiteration of Bronze Age mythology).
Whatanidiot said in an early post
No, a young Earth is not feasible, that is if we exclude the possibility of a devious trickster for a god.
You do not need to have a degree to understand the current theory of evolution. However, if you wish to criticise it and have your views taken seriously, you need, as a minimum, the knowledge equivalent to a degree in biology with more advanced courses in biochemistry, genetics, statistics, physics, biogeography, geology and paleontology. Anything less and you are like the man who went to the Paris Air Show and told aircraft designers, manufacturers and flight crew ‘I topped my class in Grade 8 Math and I’ve been able to prove that it’s impossible for aircraft to fly.’
It might be easier and do as arensb suggests by actually producing some evidence that actually supports creationism. However, as no-one has succeeded in the last 150 years I doubt if you will either.
October 30th, 2006 at 11:21 am
Some numbers: 1, 2, 4, 8 ,16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024.
What’s the connection?
A creationist argument:
Well, i believe ALL numbers are multipled by FOUR each time.
How comes?
Well, if i PICK these numbers…1, 4, 16, 64, 256, 1024, look what i get!!! Multipled by 4 each time! Seee, see, it must be true!
A scientific argument:
Here our or numbers: 1, 2, 4, 8 ,16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024.
The only logical argument is that they are powers of two.
Question. Which one is the correct answer?
November 22nd, 2006 at 8:56 pm
I am sorry, I am too stupid to understand what this is all about, who shall I blame, God or Evolution?
Thank you in forward for a devoted and passionate answer.
November 28th, 2006 at 4:34 am
I can’t stop laughing at all the narrowminded, brainwashed, faithless, shallow people trying to attack Kent Hovind with mindless dribble and inacuracies. I’m only talking about the professors, and teachers, and doctors and all the other “educated” people out there that have given their two cents worth on Mr. Hovind. I’m not even talking about the common lay person, like myself, writing responses to all the comments before mine. People. There is a reason why Mr. Hovind offers $250,000 to anyone that can prove evolution. It can’t be done! There is not one shred of factual evidence that proves evolution or any part of it. Wake up! Mr. Hovind can’t get anyone to debate him, because it would ruin careers, putting them in awkward positions, not being able to factually explain something they have been teaching or “preaching” all their “educated” lives. Whether you believe in creation or not. Doesn’t matter. Bottom line is, evolution is a “theory”, not a fact, just like religion is a “theory” to the evolutionists. Gee. That makes sense. End of discussion.
November 28th, 2006 at 10:02 am
wegs:
I’m curious: what’s your explanation for the multiple nested hierarchies seen in living beings?
Also, what mechanism prevents small changes (what you’d probably call microevolution) from adding up to become large changes?
In the exact same way that gravity is a theory, or the germ theory of disease, or atomic theory.
December 4th, 2006 at 1:55 am
wegs, seriously, stop it.
Go to http://www.kent-hovind.com
Look at (especially the ‘Quacky Quotes – Science’ pages) and look at some of the things Hovind has said. He know less about science (and especially physics) than a high school graduate, yet he manages to talk about science as though he were an expert.
Here are some examples:
The electromagnetic spectrum contains all the different wavelengths. Radio waves, microwaves, X-rays, radar, sonar, including a small piece in the middle called light.
December 4th, 2006 at 2:15 am
oops, anyway, as I was saying….
sonar is sound, not light. I learned this in meddle school….
Another one:
If you are traveling down the highway at sixty miles an hour, and turn your headlights on, how fast is the light going from your headlights? Compared to you, it is going at the speed of light. Compared to someone on the sidewalk it is going at the speed of light plus sixty miles an hour.
I’m sorry, but this is false. No scientist has ever been able to calculate the speed of light to be anthing but exactly c (~ 3 x 10^8 m/s)
The car’s motion WILL affect the light, though. The light (from the perspective of the person on the sidewalk) will have a blue shift…
Since Hovind uses ‘facts’ that are so easy to demonstrate to be incorrect, he’s making it more difficult for real scientists (who are Christian) to have any meaningful conversation about our faith with non-Christian scientists.
Hovind does not know science, but worse than that, he slanders scientists. This is his biggest mistake. If you really want to bring people to Christ, calling them names, telling them they’re going to hell, and the other tactics Hovind uses to ‘entertain’ his crowd, are not the way to do it.
As a Christian, I am appalled that someone like Hovind has gained so much popularity.
I’m pasting this in from the above website:
Evangelical churches have made great progress in this country by demonstrating God’s power over evil and by living out a message of self-sacrificial concern for those in need. Hovind’s videos would undoubtedly energize some Believers in this country, but would also fill them with easily refutable misinformation, and would further an injustice against many nonBelievers. I predict that the net result would be to hinder further progress of the work that has been done here, and to re-create the situation that we face in the United States: determined, well-organized, well-financed opposition from educated, articulate people who view us as hypocrites for calling them tools of Satan while we sinfully misrepresent them and their beliefs.
Oh, yeah, and wegs, you should be aware that NO scientist will ever try to PROVE any theory; it can’t be done with any of them.
Theories can only be falsified, or be given more corroborating evidence – that’s all.
If a theory is falsified, it is thrown out. If it’s been given more evidence, more scientists will accept the theory.
One very good example is Einstein’s theory that light is bent by gravity. In the late 1920’s (I think) there was a great opportunity to falsify this theory. Scientists looked at the (apparent) position of a star during a solar eclipse (the light would be bent – or not bent – by our sun’s gravity. They found that the light was, indeed, bent. Result? Einstein’s theory gained some evidence.
IT WAS NOT PROVED!
Not falsified either, though, and many more scientists came to accept the theory.
January 3rd, 2007 at 1:42 pm
I was reviewing a debate Hovind did several years ago and this idiot actually suggested that Tyrannosaurus rex was a herbivore! How else could they be on the Ark without making Noah into a dinner? I gave his whole view a good thrashing in my blog.
January 7th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
Did anyone here about “Dr.” Hovind’s arrest for tax fraud? I cannot believe so many people buy into his bullcrap about morals and ethics.
January 7th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Excuse me. I accidentally used the word “here” instead of “hear.” Like when Kent Hovind accidentally didn’t pay taxes on the millions of dollars he has made, off of soft minded creationists, in the past few years.
January 7th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
zack frisbee:
I noticed. See here.
February 27th, 2007 at 2:56 am
I suppose that I, too, could lower myself to the level of an anti-intellectual thug by misspelling someone’s moniker as ‘ErrandsBoy’, or by proving that my comp has spell check programming, but I shall not bother. Instead, while conceding that I am a Pro-Trinitarian Pentacostalist (whew!), I shall challenge arensb to provide some evidence of his own, to support his rather obvious belief in the hypothesis of Evolution. Please do not waste my time with some secondary educational level intro about multiple nested hierarchies-I am not in any particular need of such- but rather, demonstrate for us , as to how they provide some scientific proof/evidence of Evolution. Indeed, my studies seem to convince me that multiple nested hierarchies provide evidence of and for Intelligent Design, not to disprove it in any manner. At any rate, I shall look forward to discovering whether or not you are equal to the challenge, with which I have presented you. Good day, sirs.
February 27th, 2007 at 8:22 am
john farley:
I haven’t seen this argument before. How exactly are nested hierarchies evidence for ID? Is the designer limited to tinkering with what she’s already done, and unable to take a winning design from one lineage and reuse it in another?
March 4th, 2007 at 10:41 am
Wow – the backflap marketing of breakfast cereal packing is getting quite complex! What kind of suprise toy did you get with that?
March 11th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
My question to the evolutionists, umm where is your proof, not your therory but honest proof, like Brother Hovind says “evolution is a religion not a science”
March 11th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
Fox57:
Proof is for mathematicians and bartenders, but here’s some evidence.
March 12th, 2007 at 11:45 am
Fox57 (and others from the peanut gallery):
Why this push to denigrate evolution by calling it a religion? If religion is such anathema to you, why are you a Believer?
June 28th, 2007 at 6:07 am
It’s a pity I wasn’t able to join this discussion earlier (I admit it may even had ended by now, at least here) but I have something to say on topic:
I think both fractions (”the creationists” and “the scientists”) misunderstand the consept of the question “how it happened that the world is as we know it?”.
All I’ve read here was about what was at “the beggining”. First thing is this was not “the beggining”. For each event in the timeline there is an earlier period. I think, nobody is able to imagine that. “The beggining” is a limit of the human mind. The same resembles to the borders of space (or universe or whatever you call it). Concluding from the above I think it is beyond human mind capabilities to answer those questions.
The “Supreme being” theory is called forth to explain everything what current level of science cannot explain (in earlier periods of human history the “God’s will” was an explanation for almost everything).
The creationists’ point that the world is too complex to be created “by chance, evolution or whatever” is worth taking into consideration. I partly agree with that. But that is not the evidence for a creator, for the next question (which I’ve never seen to be asked, so, I’m going to be the first) occurs: “How did “The creator” appeared?”. In that case, “The creator” is much more complex than his creation (any doubts on that?).
And that puts an end to the theory, as this logic can be translated further and further on without any limit. Actualy the God’s existance is denied by this very argument. The circle has closed.
I know I’m going to be blamed for what I’m going to say, but all that “Creation” and “Supernatural” stuff is summoned to cover the blanks of human ignorance and limitness (if such word exists). The proof of that is A LOT of logical mistakes in every religion which can be explained only by human’s hand not God’s. So none of those holy books (The Bible, Koran, Thora and other) is a God’s creation. They all written by humans. And assumption that human is created by God’s likeness (sorry, if I use the wrong word, English is not my first language) is a proof for that.
First: even if there is a God and he created the universe, for what reason shoud he favor the humans most of all? For what reason should he care for them? Because he created them at his own likeness? And who is the author of that idea? Humans (what a miracle coincedence)!
The humans cannot be God’s likeness because they are of different gender. God cannot be of different gender at one time. Or, maybe someone whant to say that female is not a human? Also humans have legs, hands, hair, nails an so on. Do God need all those devices (he is a supreme being, remember?)? I doubt that. What else makes humans close to God? Intelligence? Ha-ha! I think no comments needed here? So, it seems to me, humans have nothing in common with God. The creationists blame “the science” or “Satan” that they are making gods of humans. I think everything is exactly the opposite: it is the creationists who thries to give humans a divine status.
Second: life after death, souls, heaven and hell and other crap… All souls go to either haven or hell? Then from where all new ones are generated? And if God created all the universe and its inhabbitants doesn’t in any way sign at any “afterlife” existance. All “afterlife” nonsense is invented by humans under stong “fear of death” and “fear of unexistance” feelings. These parts of human nature explane a lot.
So, I think, we can leave those “evolution”, “big bang”, “creation”, “the Flood” and other small questions aside. They don’t give answers to the topic discussed here.
I’m ready to hear your replies and answer them. Just try to be less emotional and stay to the topic.
September 6th, 2007 at 2:33 am
I wish I had stumbled upon this debate earlier, just found it the other day. I myself have been in this very discussion numerous times and I wondered if anyone wants to keep this discussion going.
I myself am a Christian, however I’m not a literalist in terms of the Genesis theory. Now, understand me. I’m NOT saying the Bible is false, or lying. Remember that the first 5 books os the Old Testament was written by Moses, many years ago. Okay, he may have received (and probably did) receive special insight (he did meet God) but why would God have to disclose how He made the universe and all its inhabitants? Imagine this. 1 Gen. 1: In the beginning there was a huge expansion of time and space conforming to the laws of e=mc^2, ensuring that pure energy transformed into matter over time.. Now imagine the entire evolution theory fitting into the Bible.
My view is this: God certainly did create the cosmos and everything else BUT the book of Genesis carry a much simpler version to fit in with the people of the time. Remember that 3000 years ago even the most basic physics and maths theorems was not yet devised and in the peoples’ minds at least, did not exist.
Phew. What a mouthful. I hope I get a reply guys.
Cheers
September 6th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Ou rooie:
Given a sufficiently-contrived exegesis, you can make the Bible say anything you like. For instance, I’ve heard people interpret “and God said, let the earth bring forth animals” (emphasis added) as implying abiogenesis through natural processes.
But then you have to wonder what kind of person would write it that way, if that was what he meant. Was God (or Moses, or whoever wrote the passage in question) such a bad writer that nobody understood what he meant until after the scientific discoveries of the 19th and 20th centuries? If so, then presumably there are other bits of the Bible that appear to say one thing, but really mean something else, something that won’t become apparent until after we learn something else about the world by other means. In other words, if the Bible can’t be relied to mean what it seems to say, then it’s unreliable, and we should just chuck it.
September 18th, 2007 at 5:31 am
Hey arensb sup
You certainly touch on some very delicate points there, but I would concede that you are right about the bible not being 100% historically correct. Remember that the Bible was written by people.
However, calling the entire Bible unreliable is very harsh. I do not know what your knowledge is about the Bible, but the Bible is a compilation of 66 books (testimonials, songs, stories, letters and chronicals) written over thousands of years by many different people. Also, the most important point conveyed by the Bible is not the creation, it is the gospel.
I would like to know whether you argue against Christianity or against religion in general and what your views on those topics are. As for me, I got work to do.
Cheers
September 18th, 2007 at 8:58 am
ou rooie:
Harsh perhaps, but am I wrong?
For one thing, there’s a difference between “incorrect” and “unreliable”. To take a different example, there’s a book out there called Sixteen Crucified Saviors that argues that the story of Jesus is in no way original, that there were several other myths of gods born of virgins, who performed miracles, were crucified for humanity’s sins, etc. Gods like Mithra, Dionysus, and others. This book has been criticized — by Bible skeptics and atheists, mind you — as having very poor scholarship. That is, while much of what the author says is true, some of it isn’t, and he often misquotes his sources or draws the wrong conclusion from them. In other words, you can’t just read a passage from the book and trust that it’s true, because it might be contaminated with bad information, or incorrect conclusions, or conclusions drawn from bad premises.
As to how this pertains to my point above: go visit some atheist or skeptic sites, like Internet Infidels, and read some of the critiques of the Bible. Like, say, a list of Biblical contradictions. Then visit some apologetics sites and see how they respond to these criticisms. Invariably, you’ll find explanations like “this word means X in common parlance, but in this passage it means Y”, or “this passage is metaphorical, and doesn’t mean what it appears to mean”, and various other explanations (some might say excuses) for why a passage’s “real” meaning is completely different from its surface meaning.
Assuming these explanations are correct, it means that you can’t read a verse or a chapter and trust that you’ve understood what it means. For instance, one common way of reconciling the two creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2 is to say that Gen. 1 is the overall story, and Gen. 2 is a sort of close-up view of the sixth day, concentrating on Adam and Eve. But if that’s true, then Gen. 2:4 (”This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.”) doesn’t mean what it seems to mean. The more apologetics you read, the more such passages turn out to have “non-literal” meanings. You can’t remember every bit of apologetics at once, so when you’re reading passage A, you can’t be sure that its meaning isn’t affected by passage B, which makes the Bible unreliable.
Now, I won’t deny that many things in the Bible are true. A lot of the peoples and cities mentioned in the historical books probably existed. Herod and Pontius Pilate really existed and ruled over Judea. But Hebrews were never enslaved (at least not in large numbers) in Egypt, the flood never happened, the dead didn’t walk around Jerusalem after Jesus’ crucifixion, etc. So some things in true, some things are false, some are patently ridiculous (e.g., talking snakes), and you shouldn’t trust what you read in the Bible without external confirmation.
October 1st, 2007 at 7:04 am
arensb:
Seems like you do know your history. And yes, it is my opinion that the Bible is not entirely accurate historically. But to completely discredit it as spiritual guide is another matter. I would like to know whether you argue solely against the Bible, Christianity or spiritual or supernatural beings (eg. do you believe in a god)
G2g for now. Cheers
January 8th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Hey guys,
I just found this site and in all honesty I haven’t read all of the comments posted yet but I just wanted to make my mark on the page. I believe in God and I also believe that he created the world in 6 literal days. I believe that anyone who believes other than that is mistaken and that in the end when they come to meet God face to face that they will be sorry they ever believed such a obsurd idea as evolution. In the words of Martin Luther: “Here I stand I can do no other.”
January 8th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
James,
You are more than entitled to your beliefs. Others are just as entitled to evaluate available evidence and draw differing conclusions.
January 8th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
…..I just wanted to make my mark on the page.
Well, I’ll give you credit for being a well-behaved puppy.
April 8th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
One of the big problems id that creationists do not understand the meaning of the word “theory”.
In laymans terms, a theory explains facts eg Einsteins general theory of relativity explains gravity.
The Theory of evolution explains evolution.
November 26th, 2008 at 6:07 am
What matters is the message of Christ. Love your niegbour and your enemy. Repent your sins ect ect.. All this about how, who and when is not important or at least should not be important to ones faith in God. I think mixing science and religion is as bad as mixing polotics and religion is. Faith that the God of Abraham created everything is whats important. Jesus did not speak in parables for nothing. God bless.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Sometimes we tend to make things more complicatd than what they really are. “Hmm, maybe if I put in a word whcich noone has ever heard of…hmm, perhaps that will make my theory look more right”. I may not be the smartest man walking around (IQ of only 132), and I admit, there are a lot of these words in this page I do not understand (you see my native language is not English). But imagine playing Yatzee (or Yahtzee or whatever you English call it). Wouldn´t you rather be the winner than the one leading during the game? There is no way I can prove to you that God created the earth (it is all down to faith), but I do not care, cause soon God will come to this earth and he will prove me (and all other Christian) right. So, I don´t mind being behind you guys at this point of the game. I only care about winning it, and I know that in the end I will.
January 3rd, 2009 at 5:50 am
Shorter Ravenghost:
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about, but Magic Man will save me!”
January 3rd, 2009 at 9:13 am
Hmm, arensb, perhaps it is like this: Simple (me) may not undertand complicated (you), but complicated for sure do not understand simple… I believe in something simple, you believe in something complicated. Cause that is what it is; something you believe in.It is all down to faith, not evidence or science. And yes; Magic Man will save me. As the matter of fact, he already has (2000 years ago).
I understand that you not believers (in God), are provoked by the simplicity of Christianity, but the simplicity is the beauty of it.
January 3rd, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Ravenghost:
What exactly are you talking about? The original post, about how Hovind mistook an April Fools prank for a serious article? One of the topics mentioned in the >70 comments before yours? What?
Having said that, I agree that “goddiddit” is a simple explanation for anything. That doesn’t mean it’s correct.
And if you think that evolution is a matter of faith, then you are sadly mistaken. Go educate yourself.
January 3rd, 2009 at 6:35 pm
I am trying to behave correctly in this discussion, but now you are making things personal. You are entitled to have your opinion, so please let me have mine. I do not like people, (whether they are believers in God or evolution), who say: I am right, you are wrong. I think what s political correct is to say: I believe I am right and I believe you are wrong. I think that a discussion between an “evolutionbeliever” and a believer in Christianity can not come down to evidence, simply because the whole thing about Christianity has nothing to do with evidence. We do not need evidence, we need faith. Faith is our language, and assumptions, not evidence, is your language, and we all know that a discussion is heading nowhere when those who are in the discussion have different languages. I hope that if you reply this, the reply will not be of the mocking kind. I prefer that, you see…
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Ravenghost:
If you are not interested in facts or evidence then do the rest of us a favor and stay out of discussions involving them KTHX.
January 4th, 2009 at 8:03 am
Fez: I said that I would like a discussion without any mocking (after all we are not kids), but you are certainly behaving childish when you are mocking me because of my view. I am trying to keep this discussion on a level with respect. I respect your view, so please respect my view. What is evidence? Evidence in this case, is something subjective. People have different conclusions based on what they see, hear, discover etc. even if what they see, hear or discover is the same.
If you are not interested in having an open mind and a healthy discussion, please get out of here.
January 4th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Ravenghost:
There’s a saying around here: people who don’t want their beliefs ridiculed shouldn’t have such ridiculous beliefs. If you think that a god created all life on earth 6000 years ago, then you are just as wrong as someone who believes that the sky is held up by Yggdrasil.
And that’s a big problem with Christianity. You want to believe in a god, but have no good reason to do so. So you use “faith” to give yourself permission to believe in that god anyway.
If you’re asking me to give ignorance and superstition the same respect as evidence and reasoned argument, then no thanks.
January 4th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Ravenghost:
That’s your problem right there: you don’t have any objective evidence, nothing tangible that you can point at and say “See? This is what we’d expect to see if there were a god.”
Either there is such a thing as a god, or there isn’t. You’re making a statement about the world, which is either true or false. But you can’t back up your statement with anything concrete, so why should anyone take your subjective feelings seriously?
January 4th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Ravenghost:
Bullshit. You stormed in here with your fragile little ego, waving your battle-flag of willful ignorance, and started tossing demands in every direction. You’ve acquired yourself a highly dysfunctional working definition of “respect”.
January 5th, 2009 at 2:02 am
Arensb: First of all, thank you for keeping this professional, unlike what Fez is doing…
Secondly I want to say that: yeah, you are probably right. My only evidence is my book, The Book, and that is what I believe in. Like I said; We do not understand each others language. You do not understand what faith is all about, and I do not understand the words of your science. Perhaps the reason for that is that we are not really giving it a go, because we feel to attached to what we already believe in?? Well, anyway, my agenda is only that everyone should know that there are two (at least) possibilities concerning whats right…
January 5th, 2009 at 8:11 am
Ravenghost sez:
You’ve confused yourself again. The agenda you’ve demonstrated thus far is not about correct vs. incorrect, it’s about being either too scared or too intellectually stunted to seek the answers. It’s not about opening a dialog it’s about stomping your feet and demanding that you be allowed free reign to redefine terms in any way that suits you.
Your blind faith must be a great comfort to you. No mysteries to solve, no fault to assign to yourself and your actions, no real sympathy for those who may be suffering because, hey, “My big invisible sky-friend willed it to be so.”
January 5th, 2009 at 8:35 am
Ravenghost:
Which book? The Quran? The Kalevala? The Three Little Pigs?
Or, more likely, you mean that collection of bronze age fairy tales, the one with the talking snakes and donkeys, the one that condones slavery and mysoginy, the one that says that you shouldn’t have a retirement plan or health insurance, and that if there’s mildew in your basement, you should sprinkle birds’ blood on it.
So if that’s the only book you’ve ever read, it’s not surprising that you’re a superstitious ignoramus. What I don’t understand is why you seem proud of it, or why I should accord your views any kind of respect.
Sure I do: as Mark Twain put it, “faith is believing what you know ain’t so”. You have a nice comforting fairy tale about a magical sky-daddy who loves you and won’t let you die. You don’t have any good reason to believe in him, but you really really want to, so you tell yourself that it’s okay to believe anyway, and call that process “faith” and say that it’s a virtue.
When little children believe in Father Christmas, it’s cute and charming. When grown-ups do, it’s scary. I just hope that you’ll eventually grow up.
January 5th, 2009 at 9:59 am
Hmm, I understand now that neither of you can perform the art of discussion, and I understand that this will lead nowhere, no matter what I write. We could go on like this forever. Well not forever, only until Jesus returns to the earth and saves me. You on the other hand will possible get a different encounter.
Another thing I find strange is that hmm, maybe you two are the same person. Looking at the time when you posted your last two posts one might wonder..
Fin
January 5th, 2009 at 10:14 am
To the responsible of the stupid spam filter in this page: come on!!!
To you (arensb and Fez – or maybe you are the same person. Quite possible when looking at the time of your posts…): Clearly you do not know how to perform the art of discussion. One are to respect the view of others. In a discussion you are to defend your view, rather than attack the view of others. You guys/guy are like politicians. This could go on forever, well not forever, only until Jesus comes to save me (and the others whos faith is true). Imagine – what if it is true, then you will spend forever (forever is much much longer than forever in this life) burning.
Fin
January 5th, 2009 at 10:15 am
To the responsible of the spam filter in this page: come on!!!
To you (arensb and Fez – or maybe you are the same person. Quite possible when looking at the time of your posts…): Clearly you do not know how to perform the art of discussion. One are to respect the view of others. In a discussion you are to defend your view, rather than attack the view of others. You guys/guy are like politicians. This could go on forever, well not forever, only until Jesus comes to save me (and the others whos faith is true). Imagine – what if it is true, then you will spend forever (forever is much much longer than forever in this life) burning.
Fin
January 5th, 2009 at 10:16 am
To the responsible of the spam filter in this page: come on!!!
To you (arensb and Fez – or maybe you are the same person. Quite possible when looking at the time of your posts…): Clearly you do not know how to perform the art of discussion. One are to respect the view of others. In a discussion you are to defend your view, rather than attack the view of others. You guys/guy are like politicians. This could go on forever, well not forever, only until Jesus comes to save me (and the others whos faith is true). Imagine – what if it is true, then you will spend forever (forever is much much longer than forever in this life) burning. Fin
January 5th, 2009 at 11:18 am
I was wondering when you were going to get around to the threats. It always comes to threats with you people.
January 5th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
That is no threat. That is just a “what if”…
And you keep telling me that I am stupid. Well I`d rather be stupid or whatever than burning alive forever.
January 5th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Hmm, I wonder who is the moderator here. Seems I´ve been spammed away from this forum. Nice one, arensb…
January 5th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Ravenghost spouts: [reproduced from the comment RSS feed since the original appears to have been marked as spam or trolling]
You are truly clue resistant. And paranoid. Seek help.
Meanwhile, don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya!
January 8th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Well, only time will tell. I am looking forward to it!
January 9th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Fez & arensb: You are trying to prove that I am stupid by poiniting at so called evidence from the past and now. Well I will prove you wrong by pointing at the future, and there are no ways that you can say anything against that. Perhaps you will laugh in my face now, and I do not care, cause I will have the final laugh. Not only will it be the final laugh – the laugh will last forever.
January 9th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Is this spam as well?
January 10th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Hmm, I can see that all my posts are gone away from here. So I was right then moderator (Fez/Arensb)… Good luck with your false teachings
March 27th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Is this page not up and running?
March 27th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
Ravenghost:
Looks like a bunch of your comments got eaten by the spam filter. This tends to happen when someone posts too often or too quickly, since it looks like spam.
I’ve pulled your comments out of the spam bucket. Please don’t make me regret it.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Astounding.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:43 am
The way I read this, you’re saying, “Eventually, you’re going to be tortured forever, and I’ll enjoy watching your unending pain and suffering, because you made fun of my ideas.”
Nice sense of proportion there. Do you also firebomb the restaurant when the waitress messes up your order?
March 28th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Almost 3 months and Jesus hasn’t saved you yet, Ravingghost? Guess it was decided you weren’t worthy.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Looks like I may have missed the fun over the last few years of debate here, but both sides are talking about making things up to fit their view etc. Here is a topic to ponder.
Would you be willing to be tortured (whipped, stoned, beaten, hung, run through with a sword, etc) for a lie that you made up yourself? Sounds a little far fetched not? I can see maybe being convinced by someone else that a lie they made up is truth and worth dying for, but if I made up the lie and then was told to recant or die, I am recanting for all I am worth.
Here is the point: the apostles (Peter, Paul, Andrew, Matthew and the rest) ALL (except for John who was “only” banished to an isolated island called Patmos) were all tortured and killed for something. Either it was a lie they made up about seeing Jesus risen from the dead or they saw Jesus risen from the dead.
I am college educated with a science and engineering background. I know that this debate will never be settled by “facts” because it is a heart and faith issue. The “facts” are the same for both sides. Interpretation will be the only convincing fact we can have. Fossils will not and can not prove anything. For example, if I find a dodo fossil can I claim it is a transitional fossil from a chicken to a turkey? or a hummingbird to an ostrich? or a t-rex to a chicken? Yes, I can make any interpretation of it but the fact remains, it was and always will be a DODO fossil. Any fossil can be “claimed” to be a transistional species, or just an extienct species depending on what you want it to be. (within reason of course)
As to the origin of life, think on this: Put a frog (or better yet for increased odds 10 frogs) in a blender and mix them up real good. You will have a goo. A very special goo, because it has carbon, DNA, RNA, Cellualr structure, all the necessary building blocks and pieces to make life. EVERYTHING!!! even blood, brain matter, nerve cells, bones. Now just try to make it come alive with sunlight, darkness, lightning, or even use unnatural processes like centrifuge, electroshock stirring, shaking what ever. AINT GONNA HAPPEN. No Frogs will come jumping out of the goo.
Try the same thing with some single cell organism like a bactiria or virus cell. First kill it without changing the chemical or biological formulation then try to spontainiously bring ti back to “life” Now you want to tell me that somehow NATURE all by its self brought all the pieces together and created life with some jumt start process. As Lucy Ball would say “buddy you got some ’splaining to do!”
Consider what changed Peter from a man who denied even knowing Jesus before his death and then returning to his fishing boat to the man who challenged the Sanhedren (sp?) and endured prison, the stoning of his friend Stephen and his own death crucified upside down on a cross. He SAW and TALKED to GOD Jesus Christ after he came back from the Dead. Or He made up a lie that he did and died for his own lie.
May your day be full of blessings.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:51 am
PCDR:
And how do you know that these things even happened? Because you read about them in a book that also has talking animals, magic spells, and zombies walking around Jerusalem? Got anything more convincing?
June 4th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
How do you know that Barack OBama is really in the Middle East right now? Because you see it on TV? There is more evidence external to the Bible for Jesus Being a real person, for the Missionary Journeys of Paul, and Peter, and Andrew, and John, and the rest doing what they did then there is evidence for Plato or Socrates or even Julius Cesear. Do you also doubt them too? Interesting research for you may be “Evidence that Demands a Verdict” by Josh McDowell.
Don’t reduce your argument to silliness either. I could just as easy turn around and say, “How do you know that animals don’t talk? Maybe the evolution of your brain is not as advanced as other so you just can’t hear them?” That would be silly.
Other science questions for you. Why do some of Jupiters Moons have magnetic fields showing they have a liquid core. At that distance from the sun, they should have frozen solid with say 5-8000 years of existance. Why are their comets in our solor system. The way they lose material from their tail they should be gone within say 8-10000 years. (and don’t use the made up Oort Cloud as some comet factory that shoots them off) If our moon was broken off from the earth by some collision, where is the hole? Why is it round? Where is the thing that hit us? Layers on the surface. Where did the material come from for each layer? Why did we get millions of years of Cambrian Stone, then suddenly it changes to millions of years of Shale, Then suddenly to millions of years of Limestone?
Why are there fossilized Clams on the top of Mt Everest. Still Closed? When Clams Die, they open. When they are buried, they stay closed. How do you bury a clam on Mt. Everest? The Earths magnetic Field is getting weaker meaning it used to be stronger. Go back about 10000 years and it is too strong for life. Don’t tell me it reverses because that lie has been disproven too.
Why do we find Cave paintings and Pottery with pictures of dinosaurs on them? Have you ever tried Alchemy? How does Gold get Spontaneously formed from hydrogen and helium? or oxygen, or silver, or lead?
Some faith questions for you. I believe in the beginning God existed, you believe in the beginning Nothing Existed. I do not claim to understand God because by His Nature of being God I can not. You claim to believe in Science, but science can not take nothing and make it explode into everything. Have you seen the latest claims? Watch National Geographics video on the Big Bang and the fact it was silent. It quotes “within a trillioneth of a trillioneth of a second the universe expanded to billions of light years across.” In fact it goes on to say, (paraphrase here) that rather than an explosion from a point, everything just appeared everywhere at once.
Now, you believe that everything appeared everywhere at once and is expanding, I believe that God Created everything where it is and stretched out the heavens as the bible says. We have the same facts. The Universe Exists, it is expanding. You believe nothing started it, I believe God did it 6000 years ago and wrote about it 3500 years ago in the bible. Which takes more faith? Your belief in nothing or my belief in a written word?
June 4th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
PCDR said a second time:
tl;dr, skimmed, nicely formatted, punctuated, and the spelling doesn’t make my head hurt, overall a cut above the usual.
So are you going to answer arensb’s question? He asked if you had anything more convincing to refute observed behavior than your opinion. Consider it a question I’m asking now as well.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
FEZ, See “Evidence that demands a verdict” by Josh McDowell for the sources of all these.
What happened to the apostles?
Matthew – sufffered martyrdom in Ethiopia, killed by a sword wound.
Mark – died in Alexandria, Egypt, after being dragged by horses through the streets until he was dead.
Luke – was hanged in Greece as a result of his tremendous preaching to the lost.
John – faced martydom when he was boiled in huge basin of boiling oil during a wave of persecution in Rome. However, he was miraculously delivered from death. John was then sentenced to the mines on the prison island of Patmos. He wrote his prophetic Book of Revelation on Patmos.The apostle John was later freed and returned to serve as Bishop of Edessa in modern Turkey. He died as an old man, the only apostle to die peacefully.
Peter – was crucified upside down on an x-shaped cross.,according to church tradition because he told his tormentors that he felt unworthy to die in the same way that Jesus Christ had died.
James the Just – the leader of the church in Jerusalem, was thrown over a hundred feet down from the southeast pinnacle of the Temple when he refused to deny his faith in Christ. When they discovered that he survived the fall, his enemies beat James to death with a fuller’s club. This was the same pinnacle where Satan had taken Jesus during the Temptation.
James the Greater – a son of Zebedee, was a fisherman by trade when Jesus called him to a lifetime of ministry. As a strong leader of the church, James was ultimately beheaded at Jerusalem. The Roman officer who guarded James watched amazed as James defended his faith at his trial. Later, the officer walked beside James to the place of execution. Overcome by conviction, he declared his new faith to the judge and knelt beside James to accept beheading as a Christian.
Bartholomew, also known as Nathanael – was a missionary to Asia.He witnessed to our Lord in present day Turkey. Bartholomew was martyred for his preaching in Armenia when he was flayed to death by a whip.
Andrew – was crucified on an x-shaped cross in Patras, Greece. After being whipped severely by seven soldiers they tied his body to the cross with cords to prolong his agony. His followers reported that, when he was led toward the cross, Andrew saluted it in these words: “I have long desired and expected this happy hour. The cross has been consecrated by the body of Christ hanging on it.” He continued to preach to his tormentors for two days until he expired.
Thomas – was stabbed with a spear in India during one of his missionary trips to establish the church in the sub-continent.
Jude, the brother of Jesus, – was killed with arrows when he refused to deny his faith in Christ.
Matthias – the apostle chosen to replace the traitor Judas Iscariot, was stoned and then beheaded.
Barnabas – one of the group of seventy disciples, wrote the Epistle of Barnabas. He preached throughout Italy and Cyprus.Barnabas was stoned to death at Salonica.
Paul – was tortured and then beheaded by the evil Emperor Nero at Rome in A.D. 67. Paul endured a lengthy imprisonment which allowed him to write his many epistles to the churches he had formed throughout the Roman Empire. These letters, which taught many of the foundational doctrines of Christianity, form a large portion of the New Testament.
All of this is from Non Biblical sources. Feel Free to respond to this with rebuttals or any of my science questions.
This is fun.
June 4th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
PCDR Says:
Ah.
As rebuttal see http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/jury/chap5.html as it covers the highlights with far greater knowledge of the subject material and far greater detail than I posses.
As for your “science” questions…ugh. Have you never encountered plate tectonics in your studies to receive your “science and engineering” background? Hope you aren’t involved in any building, bridge, or other infrastructure construction. I could answer your question regarding the oblate spheroid shape of the moon with, “because all bodies above a certain size are oblate spheroids” but that would be engaging in the same deflection tactics used…elsewhere. Instead I’ll rhetorically ask if you have never encountered gravity nor conservation of angular momentum in your studies to achieve your “science and engineering” background?
Moving on…why are you so dismissive of the Oort Cloud’s existence? Been there and seen the lack of evidence for yourself? What about the unicorn herd existing at the liquid/gaseous interface boundary in Neptune – how can you prove to me they don’t exist?
June 4th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
PCDR:
I was about to point you at the same critique of McDowell as Fez did. As for your assertion that
In the case of Julius Cæsar, we have books that he is said to have written (such as his history of the gallic conquests). We have contemporary accounts that talk about him, from multiple sources, both praising him and criticizing him. We have statues and likenesses of him made during his (alleged) lifetime. Nothing similar to that exists today. The best we have is copies of copies of manuscripts dating to the 2nd century CE.
But that’s really beside the point: the question isn’t really whether there was an itinerant cult leader named Yeshua in Judea at that time who thought the end of the world was near. Those were a dime a dozen, so it’s quite possible that he existed. The question is, was he a god? Did he perform miracles? And for that, there is no extrabiblical evidence.
You may want to look up Sai Baba who is, according to his followers, performing miracles today. No need to look through ancient manuscripts in dead languages; this guy’s on YouTube. Does that evidence convince you that he’s a god? And if not, why should I be convinced that Jesus was one?
June 4th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Mormonism has some tens of millions of members. Scientology has at least some tens of thousands (reliable numbers seems to be hard to come by). Many of members of both those religions have sacrificed a great deal for their devotion, in some cases even their lives.
And yet we know beyond all reasonable doubt that the founders of both sects were con-men who made the whole thing up.
In 1978 over 900 members of the Jonestown cult commited suicide. In 1993, 76 people died when the Branch Davidian compound burned down. In 1997, 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult commited suicide, believing they would be reincarnated as something better.
The moral of this story is that devotion — even martyrdom — in the followers is very poor evidence for the truth of the teachings.
Oh, and this: Don’t tell me it [the earth's magnetic field] reverses because that lie has been disproven too.
That would be news to almost every geologist on the planet. Disproven by whom? Ignoramus and crackpot Walter Brown, perhaps?
June 5th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Great Replys, I have to be quick today, but I will be back on Monday.
First off Fez, The extra biblical sources each by its self not provide 100% proof, but taken all together make a very strong argument. Did we land man on the moon? Well a photograph can be faked, and moon rocks can be fabricated, and space ships can launch one place and land another, and people can lie, but add all the evidence together and the case becomes very strong. So, taking the biblical account with the vast array of other accounts, It is pretty certain that Jesus the man did exist as a real person in Jerusalem in the time frame of 30 AD. So the next question is – still unanswered by both arensb and Eamon Knight – did his followers see him rise from the dead or did they make it up. Don’t give me the the second hand follower example of mormonism and scientology or Jonestown or even Christian Martyrs, respond to the Direct Followers, the ones who gave their lives for the claim that THEY started. If they lied, why would they die for it? Would you die for a lie you made up? I can see dying for a lie someone convinced you was real because you wanted to believe, but not for my own lie. You mention Sai Baba, IF he said go ahead and Kill Me, I will come back in 3 days, then His followers said “yep he came back to life, I am willing to be stoned and left for dead, beaten 3 times with 39 stripes, shipwreaked, chained to a soldier, put in prison, watch my friends and fellow believers be beaten, stoned, beheaded, burned at the stake, crucified on a cross, thrown to lions, pulled apart by horses, and many other heinous ways to die, THEN I may consider him to truly be back from the dead.
Besides as eager as the Jewish leaders were to suppress this “cult uprising” why did they not just go to Jesus grave, open it up and say “Here is the dead guy these “christians” are lying about. Oh yeah, I forgot, the fishermen stole his body from an armed trained Roman Guard.
Plate Techtonics explains movement at the cracks in the crust, it does not explain the accumulation of layers of materials.
Conservation of angular momentum does not explain why Jupiter has moons that spin in opposite direction or why Jupiter has moons that have moons that spin in opposite directions or why the sun has planets that spin in opposite directions.
I thought we were going to talk science and proof here not an Oort Cloud with no direct or even indirect evidence. It is only 2000 – 50000 AU away. Hubble should be able to see that before breakfast considering it is staring “far in the reaches of our past millions and billions of light years away”
So, FEZ, I find your dismissiveness of real observed science to be childish and petty. Answer the questions if you can or move on to a different topic. Don’t patronize me with Unicorns and “have you heard of gravity”
So ARENSB, I find your arguments well crafted but not answering the questions. All the Deaths of the Apostles are recorded in extrabiblical sources. The only one killed in the Bible are Stephen and unnamed ones that Paul pursued when he was Called Saul. What could have possibly changed his mind? A Lie he helped make up? Come on!! Get real.
And Eamon Knight, I am not talking about the followers of cult leaders, I am talking about the Ones starting the “cult” (not my word) of Christianity being willing to be not just killed but brutally killed. And the Magnetic Field is supposed to protect us from radiation, but since no major extinctions can be timed to the supposed reversals it must not protect us, something else does. Science want to have their cake and eat it too is seems to me. It is also funny that for some reason the last “reversal” 780,000 years ago, but they happened very frequently before that. Also some scientists even claim they happen every 2000-20000 years. How does it happen? Why does it happen? When will it happen? Science is about Facts. Theories are just opinions until repeated testing observation proves them. I saw a tree that grew some wierd shaped branches that were made of iron and shaped like a tractor. That is a theory. Facts are a tractor was left in a grove and a tree gree up through and around it and incorporated the tractor into the tree. We see portions of the ocean floor with patterns (stripes) of magnetic field strength differences ( highs and lows not reversals). My Opinion is the ocean floor was wrinkled by ejection of molton material and the wrinkles have sediment in them in places, cracks in them on the peaks, and were cooled at different rates causing regulars stripes of differing magnetic fields. Others opinions are that the magnetic field changes direction at random unpredictably. The facts are the same the opinions are different and no one was around 780,000 years ago to know the truth 100%. One theory fits the bible, the other theory confilts with other science. We get to choose which to believe because of our world view and neither can PROVE the other side wrong. Unless we see the magnetic field reverse again with the corresponding results or Jesus Returns with the corresponding results. Agree or Disagree?
Actually, I stayed longer than I thought. Have a good weekend. (Maybe check the Dead Sea Scrolls for some of the over 200 distinct prophecies fulfilled by Jesus the Man written long before Jesus the Man Came to earth. Could be food for thought.)
June 5th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
PCDR:
I’ll repeat:
PCDR continues:
It explains perfectly your expressed puzzlement regarding, “Why are there fossilized Clams on the top of Mt Everest. Still Closed? When Clams Die, they open. When they are buried, they stay closed. How do you bury a clam on Mt. Everest?” The answer is that enclosing material was not Mt. Everest when said clams were deposited but I shouldn’t have to explain that to an educated person with a science and engineering background.
Yes it does, in conjunction with other physics that I’m not going to bother going in to and I’m even going to explain why. Let me explain via analogy: you’ve just asked me to explain to you how to replace the valve body in a GM THM350 transmission after explaining to me that not only do you not own a car the only maintenance procedure you know of was you once read that cars require periodic refueling and there’s this “battery” thing that you’ve heard about but haven’t seen. You’re demonstrably lacking in the fundamental knowledge necessary to make use of this other information you desire.
So why don’t you explain to us where comets come from.
The existence of the Oort cloud explains all observed phenomena to date and the physics necessary for such a construct to exist are well understood and have withstood centuries of experimental and observational efforts. It’s quite hypocritical of you, after making such an ignorant display, to accuse anyone of being “dismissive” thus you’ve earned the right to pass the Unicorn test:
I know what unicorns look like, you probably know what unicorns look like, in fact millions of people can explain without hesitation what unicorns look like. I can provide you with a wealth of literature, both historical and contemporary, where unicorns are mentioned or featured. I can provide you pictures of unicorns. From where do you get the arrogance to (metaphorically) stand there and tell me that there are no unicorns on Neptune? I’ve even provided you specifics of where on Neptune they can be located so what’s your problem?
June 5th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
PCDR:
First of all, your last comment got caught in the spam filter for some reason. If you leave a comment and it doesn’t show up, don’t panic. If I see it, I’ll fish it out.
Secondly, I thought I’d try my hand at argument mapping. As far as I can make out, your argument looks like the tree below, with the conclusion at the top, sub-arguments that support the conclusion (in a form resembling a syllogism) underneath that, sub-sub-arguments that support the sub-arguments, and so forth. Arguments in red weaken the arguments above them, instead of strengthening them. So:
Conclusion: Jesus was a god.
I’m sure you can see problems all over the place with this argument. It relies heavily on the reliability of eyewitness testimony. But as any detective, judge, or stage magician can tell you, eyewitness testimony is far from reliable. If I’m ever on a jury, and on one hand, ten people swear that they saw the accused rob a liquor store, while on the other hand a single security tape shows him getting gas at the time of the robbery, I’ll side with the security tape over the eyewitnesses every time.
Your argument also begins with the existence of eyewitness accounts of Jesus after his death. Okay, where are the gospels of Peter, Paul, Andrew, and any other extrabiblical eyewitnesses you had in mind? Or are you asking us to accept a second-hand claim that these accounts once existed? Given that you won’t accept video testimony that Sai Baba is a god, you may want to rethink this.
You’re asking us to accept as reliable two sets of accounts: a) the “eyewitness” accounts saying that Jesus rose from the dead, and b) those that say that the alleged eyewitnesses maintained their beliefs. If either one is false, that weakens or destroys your argument. Furthermore, you haven’t given any references to either set of accounts.
You’re also making a false dichotomy: that either a person is telling the truth, or that person is deliberatly lying. The person could instead be misremembering, or mistaken, or confused, or passing along a legend. In addition, we don’t have any originals of the New Testament. And we know that errors have crept in between manuscripts, sometimes significant ones.
In short, your argument is full of weaknesses. Go back and fix them.
June 15th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Sorry for the delay, I have been out of town to a very interesting Robotics trade show. More on that later. I am busy trying to catch up so I just have one question.
Where did you come from? Prove it.
June 15th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
pcdr,
You’ve had lots of questions thus far and they’ve been answered. It’s your turn now. Answer the questions above that you’ve bypassed.
June 16th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Fez,
You use Jeff Lowder as a source of rebuttal.
As rebuttal see http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/jury/chap5.html as it covers the highlights with far greater knowledge of the subject material and far greater detail than I posses.
In summary for those reading, here is his rebuttal.
Paraphrase “Yes there are eyewitness accounts, but eyewitness sometimes lie so any eyewitness account can not be proof.”
Paraphrase “Yes there are unaffiliated persons writing the same thing, but their writings could have been faked or altered by aformentioned eyewitness so the outside accounts can not be proof.”
Paraphrase “Yes there are accounts of the apostles and disciples being tortured and killed, but there are also stories and legends of other non biblical heros suffering. The apostles stories could be copies. Therefore, no proof”
The same type of argument could be used to disprove anything.
Nasa said we landed on the moon but sometimes people lie – no proof
We have pictures that men were on the moon, but sometimes pictures are fake – no proof
We have space capules that launched and landed in the ocean, but no one saw them on the moon – no proof.
We have astronauts that say they were on the moon but they have a vested interest – no proof.
We have moon rocks but they could have been rocks altered in a lab – no proof.
There is a flag planted on the moon, but that could have evolved in place – no proof.
Another way to put it is “Jeff Lowder was not around when any of the sources were written so HE (and his argument) is unable to be proof for or against them.” However I am not arguing that. I am simply saying any one point – including Videotape can be picked apart, but sometimes the preponderance of the entire volume of evidence makes the proof unmistakable.
I could go on and on:
Fez types reponses with his “name” but anyone can put the characters F E Z in the name box – no proof that Fez Exists
Fez sees unicorns on neptune – everyone knows that is false so Fez is not grounded in reality – therefore Fez must be insane.
Fez argues his points on this board, but no one reading here can see him typing so He Must not have done it. His words probably just evolved here by chance arrangement of the bits and electrons over time.
So Fez you answered my questions with “You are to stupid to understand the science so I am not going to answer your questions.” Brilliant Response.
You want to know where comets come from. I have two possibilities both backed by the evidence.
First the facts
1. Comets exists.
2. Comets lose material out their tail as they fly.
3. Comets melt as they approach the sun in their orbit.
4. Any comet that passes through the interplanatary system has its orbit changed “deflected” by the sun and the planets it passes by leading to destabilization of the orbit eventually causing it to fly into space or collide with something.
Any arguments with facts 1-4?
Study of the physics and properties of comets leads the scientific community to conclude the lifespan of a comet at the top end is about 10,000 years.
Any disagreement with this conclusion (this is not my conclusion by the way, I just agree with it)?
So ANY observed comet must have been formed less than 10,000 years ago by some process. (agreed? or Not?)
The bible says that God created the Heavens and the Earth and All that is in them about 6000 years ago.
Answer one is that God created the comets about 6000 years ago, this fits the facts.
Answer two is that When the Earth was flooded 4400 years ago the fountains of the deep broke forth. This could have caused Water and dirt to be ejected from the Earths gravitational pull. Viola – a new comet. Consider that Oil and Natural Gas deposits have been found with pressures of 20000-30000 psi and it becomes not too hard to imagine this happening.
Now Can you disprove either of these with SCIENCE or OBSERVED FACT?
Fez Writes:
The existence of the Oort cloud explains all observed phenomena to date and the physics necessary for such a construct to exist are well understood and have withstood centuries of experimental and observational efforts.
This is all good except for the lack of proof of its existance there fore it is just as big of a leap of faith as saying God did it. In other word, it can NOT be seen, observed, touched, felt, measured, or proven.
One other thing about all bodies above a certain size are “oblate spheroids”. Fine, but when you break one “oblate spheroid” off of another “oblate spheroid”, the original now is not an “oblate spheroid” but an “oblate spheroid” with a chunk missing. Try this with a 5 year old.. Take an apple, ask what whape it is. Round will be the answer. Take a melon baller and remove a ball from the apple. Ask what shape the ball is. Round will be the answer. Ask them if the apple is still round. NO will be the answer. There is a chunk missing.
Your turn.
June 16th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
PCDR:
The first problem I noticed was with claim #2: comets don’t lose material from flying through space: there’s no air in space to blow material off of a comet, like snow from a car. Rather, when comets get close enough to the sun, they get warmed up, and the ice sublimates and escapes the comet.
You’ll notice that the tail of a comet doesn’t follow the comet’s motion; rather, it always points away from the sun.
Citation, please. The only person I’ve ever heard claim this is Kent Hovind.
Sorry, comets are chunks of ice, not string instruments. Thanks for playing.
Well, sure. Once you posit a magic man who can do anything, you can explain anything. I could reply that the Flying Spaghetti Monster formed the world to look the way it is. This explanation fits all the facts, but I bet you don’t find it very convincing. So why should I take your magic man more seriously than the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
I think we may have found a source of your confusion: your science consultant is a five-year-old who thinks that apples are round like balls. Have you considered going to scientists when you have science-related questions?
At any rate, your central assertion, that Jesus existed and did magic, is still backed up with nothing more than nth-generation hearsay. You haven’t presented any new evidence, just tried to argue that that should be good enough. I’m sorry, but it isn’t. And it’s not good enough for you, either: otherwise you would have to accept that Joseph Smith was visited by the angel Moroni and that the Quran was dictated to Mohammed by the archangel Gabriel. But you don’t. So you’re engaging in special pleading.
Face it. You don’t have anything.
June 16th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
“The way they lose material from their tail they should be gone within say 8-10000 years. (and don’t use the made up Oort Cloud as some comet factory that shoots them off)
Answer two is that When the Earth was flooded 4400 years ago the fountains of the deep broke forth. This could have caused Water and dirt to be ejected from the Earths gravitational pull. Viola – a new comet.”
The amount of brainwashing that comes from Kent Hovind is amazing. With his water shot up from the deep and into space to make comets and form water on other planets. Do you even know what the Oort Cloud is and why is it made up? Because it flies in the face of your so called contradiction of the age of the universe you disbelieve it. The Oort cloud is a huge mass of Ices (water, ammonia, and methane) along with dirt and rocks that come together to form billions of comets that orbit far outside our solar system. How is that any different than your water and dirt being propelled into space to create comets? It’s not, it’s like saying that the free market economy doesn’t exist, people are just buying and selling things with little government regulation.
June 16th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
“I thought we were going to talk science and proof here not an Oort Cloud with no direct or even indirect evidence. It is only 2000 – 50000 AU away. Hubble should be able to see that before breakfast considering it is staring “far in the reaches of our past millions and billions of light years away””
Yet another example of your ignorance showing through. Pluto is approximately 30-49 AU’s distance from sun, or 30 to 49 times the distance from the sun than the earth is. That’s about 47 Billion KM’s. The Oort cloud is hypothesized to be 2000 to 50,000 AU’s from the sun. That is 40 times the distance Pluto is from the sun at it’s nearest and 1,000 times at it’s farthest. Now imagine looking for something smaller than pluto at that distance even with the Hubble telescope, which btw, a telescope works by collecting light from an object. A comet isn’t going to give off any of it’s own light, it’s going to reflect all the light from other sources. Which means that only a fraction is going to be reflected towards earth. Combine that with the fact that even the few photons that a comet at that distance would reflect and as well as those that could possibly reach hubble might not even register (there’s only so much the human eye can see in a photograph).
Google Hubble Deep View and you might get an understanding of just how massive the universe is and how ridiculous your statement is. It would just as easy to find gold atoms spread out over several hundred or even a thousand football fields using binoculars.
June 16th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
So using Arensb argument Prove the Oort cloud exists or don’t use it. Or at least have some shred of evidence other than Comets exist so they have to come from the Oort Cloud.
June 16th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
“Viola – a new comet”, just copying science “Big Bang – a new universe”
June 16th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
PCDR:
The sum total of your statements above boil down to this: the only acceptable proof to you is that which you can directly observe and/or participate in.
Congratulations, you’ve just invalidated every claim you’ve made here, spending two weeks and a few thousand words to say absolutely nothing.
What, to you, was the purpose of this exercise?
June 16th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
And you still haven’t taken the Unicorn test.
June 16th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Not the only acceptable proof, ANY PROOF will at least make it usable. NOT just Theory!
June 16th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Unicorns are like transition fossils. Figments of your imagination.
June 16th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
FEZ says “The sum total of your statements above boil down to this: the only acceptable proof to you is that which you can directly observe and/or participate in. “
Isn’t that the criteria that Science is supposed to use?
June 16th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
I am gone till Friday. Enjoy.
June 16th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
PCDR,
Come on, you can do better than that. I’ll even do you the courtesy of restating it here so you don’t have to go back for it.
June 16th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Unicorns are like transition fossils. Figments of your imagination.
Well then, you can explain why none of the fossils referenced here, and in the linked pages, are transitional. In particular, you can tackle Wes Elsberry’s Transitional Fossil Challenge.
Or you can just admit you’re making stuff up, and do not, in fact, have a clue what you’re talking about.
Your choice.
June 17th, 2009 at 12:06 am
PCDR:
According to this site, Hubble’s angular resolution is 0.1 arcseconds, which means that it can resolve an object 241 miles across that’s as far away from us as Saturn is.
According to Wikipedia, Saturn is between 8 and 10.5 AU away, depending on where it and Earth are in their orbits. The Oort cloud is roughly 2,000-5,000 AU away. If my math is correct, an item 2000 AU away would have to be over 90,000 miles across for Hubble to resolve it. But comets are only up to 40 km across. (Yes, it can resolve galaxies that are much, much farther away than the Oort cloud. But those galaxies are also brain-manglingly large.)
See also this discussion on whether Hubble could take pictures of the lunar landers (short answer: no).
At any rate, you said that there was extrabiblical evidence for Jesus’ existence. Are you ever planning on presenting this evidence? If not, you should at least have the grace to admit that you don’t have any, so that we can move on.
June 18th, 2009 at 10:56 am
PCDR:
You seem to be under the impression that scientists just pull stuff out of their asses. You should really do yourself a favor and listen to the June 17 episode of the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast (MP3 here), which is all about the Big Bang. It’s only about 10 minutes long, and provides a nice layman-level introduction to the Big Bang.
While you’re listening, take note of two things: first, the narrator isn’t shy about pointing out areas that aren’t well understood yet, and unanswered questions. Second, he mentions evidence that leads astronomers to their conclusions, like the current expansion of the cosmos, and the cosmic background radiation. Not as much as I’d like, but there’s only so much you can do in ten minutes.
At any rate, it’s a good introduction to the subject, and might help you to not mischaracterize it in the future.
June 18th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
PCDR:
After you’re done with Eamon Knight and Wesley Ellsberry’s challenge, you may want to explain why this isn’t a transitional fossil.
Or rather, why that isn’t a transitional fossil in the sense that evolutionary biologists use the term. I already know that it’s not a crocoduck, which is the only thing that would convince Ray Comfort that evolution occurs, but is also something completely different from what people who know what the hell they’re talking about mean by “transitional species”.
June 18th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
“Isn’t that the criteria that Science is supposed to use?”
Can science directly observe how DNA is used by the Human body to reproduce? How about directly observing a hydrogen atom fusing to form helium? Do you really need to see a virus for yourself before you believe that it is what makes you sick? Of course not, but based on the facts that we know about these systems along with other facts that are known, a hypothesis can be pieced together eventually with enough reproducible examples leads to a theory.
“Not the only acceptable proof, ANY PROOF will at least make it usable. NOT just Theory!”
Besides the fact that you sound like an idiot when you say that. As shown above scientific theories are based on facts and observations. Not just someone such as yourself that spouts something out and calls it a theory (which really means a guess). I don’t think that any proof will be acceptable to you unless it happens to be one of the many impossible and unrealistic ideas that make no sense and therefore would never happen. These include fish with feet and or fish with lungs. Sorry you just won’t find those, the same way you won’t find monkeys and gorillas giving birth to Homo Sapiens. It’s just an impossibility that creationists use to deny evolution to themselves and other people. You know there are some people today that still think the earth is flat? No matter how much proof you give them, they continue to deny that the earth is round. Some people believe that the earth is round, yet they deny that the earth orbits the sun. The list goes on and on, but in the end there is sufficient proof for all these things, yet they refuse to believe it because they are stuck in their belief and refuse to change.
You speak of transitional fossils being a figment of someone’s imagination, but what do you really expect to find in a transitional fossil??? Ignoring the fact that transitional fossils have been found. What kind of fossil would make you realize that maybe there is something more to evolution? I can answer that for you. There won’t be any kind because you will find some way to rationalize how it’s not really transitional, or it’s a hoax, or it’s still not real proof. Because you are stuck in your beliefs, for whatever reason, any outside view of origins is going to be rejected no matter how much proof you have been given. If you would only open your eyes and your mind you would see how many transitional animals are alive today much less that are found in the fossil record.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
menes777:
Not to rain on your parade or anything, but what about Acanthostega and its feet, or lungfish and their, well, lungs?
June 19th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
First Question, what criteria is used to determine what is a “transitional fossil”?
Second Question, for all evolutionist here, You are a human. If you have Kids (and grandkids), I assume they are human. I would also place a high dollar bet that your parents are human. And your Grandparents. And their parents. And Their Parents. I would bet they all have 23 pairs of Chromosomes. Explain to me when in your family tree you would expect your decendents to not be human and not have the same 23 chromosomes or when in your ancestory they were not humans and did not have 23 chromosomes. When was this http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/05/19/human.ancestor/index.html?iref=mpstoryview part of your family background?
June 19th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
“Not to rain on your parade or anything, but what about Acanthostega and its feet, or lungfish and their, well, lungs?”
Nope, not raining on my parade.
I think those are excellent examples of transitional evidence.
June 19th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Menes:
In response to your direct proof of viruses, DNA, etc. That is at least some proof. We may not understand it all, but we can observe viruses, we can measure and analyze DNA, That moves it into the Science Realm from the Theory Realm. Give me ONE measure, observance, test, anything showing any sign of an OORT Cloud other than the fact that Comets are flying through space and they have a limited life span so they must have come from somewhere.
Then speculate back 17 billion or so years for the age of the Universe and Theorize how big the Oort cloud would have had to have been in the beginning of the solar system, then thoerize where the ice and rock came from to form it, then you really start to have a problem with the whole concept of a billions of years old Oort cloud “creating” comets.
June 19th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
PCDR:
You have no fucking clue what “theory” means in science, do you?
This fragment is a mishmash of poorly-understood ideas, and illustrates one of your big problems (and of creationists in general): you’re not in this debate to find out what the truth is. If you were, you could’ve taken a few seconds to google “age of the universe” and “age of the solar system” and found out that while the universe is about 13 billion years old (not 17 billion), the solar system (and the Earth, and the Oort cloud) is only 4.5 billion years old.
There’s no shame in being ignorant. Hell, I’m ignorant about any number of things. But you seem to have no interest in correcting your ignorance. And in this information age, that’s far less forgivable.
You’re not in this to figure out what’s true. You’re here to push your dogma. That’s why you never respond to criticism, and just jump from one point to another, trying to find something that’ll stick. Your approach is purely tactical: you don’t care whether an argument or claim is true, only whether it works rhetorically. Look at how quickly you forgot all about your claims of extrabiblical evidence for Jesus’ miracles.
You’ve shown no evidence of having read any of the resources people have pointed you at, above. Or, indeed, of any willingness to learn. If you ever decide that you’re interested in debating the truth of a given proposition, you’re welcome to come back, but in the meantime I have no desire to trade rhetorical points with you.
June 19th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
You’re not in this to figure out what’s true. You’re here to push your dogma. That’s why you never respond to criticism
Indeed. I was thinking of asking an online geologist or two for some references on paleomagnetism to rebut some of PCDR’s silly claims, but it hardly seems worth bothering busy people for the sake of an ignoramus who won’t listen.
June 20th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
PCDR wrote:
That’s like asking when Abraham’s descendants will stop being descended from Abraham.
This is a common misconception, so I’ll recycle something I wrote elsewhere:
Oh, and here’s one of those “something interesting”s.
So anyway, when are you going to get around to answering the questions you’ve been asked?
June 20th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Explain to me when in your family tree you would expect your decendents to not be human and not have the same 23 chromosomes or when in your ancestory they were not humans and did not have 23 chromosomes.
That’s two questions in one.
If by “human” you mean Homo sapiens then IIRC we’ve been around for something like 250kyrs. Genus Homo goes back another few hundred thousand years (maybe a million or so?).
Chromosome number is a separate question, as that does not define species boundaries, ie. some of our ancestral species may also have had 46, and not even all humans have 46 (and the exceptions are not always pathological, either. Google “robertsonian fusion”).
But if you’re asking when our lineage achieved its current chromosome count, that would presumably be sometime since we split off from the chimpanzee lineage, IIRC ~6Mya. Here is a paper discussing the genetic differences between us and them, in particular that human chromosome 2 appears to be the result of a fusion between chimp chromosomes 12 and 13: http://overtexplorations.com/Bill/2qFus.pdf
June 20th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
PCDR,
Seems that pretty much everyone contributing to your resurrection of this thread has done you the courtesy of answering your questions. When are you going to demonstrate an equivalent level of politeness?
July 6th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Hi, I have been out on Vacation for 2 weeks and Missed you all. I am starting to detect some harshness to your responses though, and so I am sorry for appearing to not answer your questions as you think I should. I tried to answer every one but with so many different directions being taken I probably missed some. By the same token, I have presented many questions I feel are not being addressed also.
So with that in mind, I do feel that for many areas we cen look at the same facts and draw different conclusions and never agree. I would like to continue these discussions though, so here is what I would like to do. I will ask one question. Anyone who responds with answers to that one question or related questions, I will try to respond to. If you would like to ask me one question/topic at a time, I will respond to that also.
I do not know how to put the little boxes around previous quotes or italics or other formatting. Please bear with me on that.
My Question. Tell me about the evolution of time, space, and matter. Where did it come from?
July 6th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
PCDR:
It’s ordinary HTML: <blockquote> for quoting, <em> for emphasis.
July 6th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
July 6th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
PCDR:
No. You don’t get to bring up any more topics until you address the questions that have been asked before, starting with “How do you know that these things happened?“.
Fez and Eamon Knight have pointed you at information about why your arguments are bogus. I’ve tried to be fair and map out the form of your argument, and only succeeded in showing that it is indefensible.
You can either bring hard solid evidence to the table, or you can admit that you’re wrong. Then we’ll move on to the next unanswered question.
Creationists and apologists always do this: as soon as one of your talking points is refuted, you move on to the next one to see if something will stick, like a guilty child desperately searching for an excuse that mom and dad will accept. You’re not interested in what’s true, you’re only interested in playing “stump the wicked atheist”.
As for the origin (I assume you meant “origin”, not “evolution”) of time, space, and matter: do I look like a cosmologist to you? Why don’t you go look on Wikipedia or read a book or something?
Of course, I suspect that you don’t really give a rat’s ass about the correct answer. You just want to elicit an “I don’t know” from me. Fine. I’m happy to admit that I don’t know how the universe started. But you have yet to demonstrate why “magic man done it!” is a better answer than “I don’t know”.
July 7th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
What does it really matter about the origins of these things? We can prove that space exists through the most basic of scientific experiments, as well as time and matter. The understanding how these things came to be could be beyond a human beings level of comprehension. The mystery of the origins of these could be solved in a thousand years from now or maybe even next week or maybe even never. A complete model of the origin of space and time could possibly never be more than conjecture and hypothesis. Your question is similar to this one.
“Can g-d create a rock so big that he himself cannot lift it?”
It adds no value to any argument and any answer makes little difference in someone’s overall belief.
July 8th, 2009 at 9:35 am
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/04/0418_030418_jesusrelic.html
National Geographic (not a religious site) on the proof of James and Jesus being an important figure
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1027410/posts
Burial Site of Many of the First century christians named in the New Testament
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529346,00.html
The Bones of Paul (maybe)
http://www.allaboutarchaeology.org/the-house-of-david-inscription-faq.htm
Proof of the Existance of the House of David from a king of Damascus (Aram) (Just a bonus here)
http://www.allaboutjesuschrist.org/historical-and-scientific-proof-of-jesus-faq.htm
Proof from Josephus, in the book Jewish Antiquities
and Roman historian Carius Cornelius Tacitus
Proof in the stones of the existance of these people is one step toward proving their accounts.
For the rest of the proof, you are correct, there are no videotapes to watch. Just as there are no videotapes of any other event from before the invention of photography. Are you going to use that as an argument that the World did not exist before motion pictures? No, you are going to consider the evidence as a whole and draw a conclusion. Like I have said before, there is a vast amount of references to Jesus from Christian sources, Jewish sources, Roman sources, and others. Any one of these by itself could be doubted, but taken as a whole they provide very compelling evidence that the events of the New Testament are likely to be factual. Now, you may choose to shut your eyes and say “I don’t see it” but that does not make them go away.
[Edited, 17:20: fixed a URL --arensb]
July 8th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Menes777
What does it matter where stuff comes from? My Theory answers that question, yours can not. I thought you were about facts and science not blind belief.
However, I will give you a second chance, Tell me about the evolution of stars. I will even give you some facts to go on.
1. Stars are required to perform fusion to create elements above hydrogen.
2. Elements (in the form of clouds of hydrogen, helium, and “molecular dust”) are required to create stars
3. Massive forces such as the collision of Galaxies are needed to compress the matter to spark the fusion.
Now, I admit, I glibly threw in “My Theory” in the first line. I believe that Something vastly superior to me created time, space, and matter. I as a created human do not have the capacity to understand everything about my creator, but I have a book of His revealed answers for many common questions. What do you have?
July 8th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
PCDR:
Well, sure. But so does the theory that invisible universe-creating pixies are busily creating time and space all over the place.
“Magic man done it!” is an answer. But what makes you think that it’s a correct answer?
July 8th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
This sort of answer always brings me to the same question: Why is positing another unexplainable thing with no origin a satisfactory response to the unexplained origin of the universe? The number of unexplained things hasn’t decreased, but the complexity of the non-explanation has increased.
Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled blog debate…
July 8th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
PCDR Says:
Sure, and my hypothetical response of , “Blue” to your hypothetical question, “Which animals lay eggs?” is also an answer but it’s nonsensical.
You do not have a Theory; at most you have the weakest of hypothesis and at the least you have a simple belief. Now take the next step – how are you going to validate your hypothesis?
And I’m still waiting for you, using the arguments you yourself have laid out above, to complete the Unicorn Test.
July 8th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
PCDR:
Okay, and how do you propose to take the next 999 steps?
Leadership U, which the Free Republic article links to, is a religious site. So are the allabout* sites (allaboutarchaeology.org has a blurb at the bottom about how we’re all worthless pieces of crap who deserve to be tortured forever unless we swear allegiance to Jesus). So they’re obviously biased. Poking around allaboutjesuschrist.org, it looks like they’re creationists, and still think the shroud of Turin might be real, which shows how bad their scholarship is.
Heck, the page you linked to accepts the Testimonium Flavianum as true, even though it’s widely accepted as a later insertion to the text. And the quoted excerpt from Tacitus only claims that there were Christians in the time of Nero. That’s hardly an extraordinary claim. I mean, there are Christians now.
The other articles you linked to are of a similar sort: assuming that they’re correct, they show that there lived, somewhere around the first or second century, people with the same names as in the Gospel accounts. If the National Geographic article is to be believed, Jesus was considered important enough to be named on James’s ossuary.
Let’s grant that James’s brother really was the Jesus; that some of the people buried under the Mount of Olives are mentioned in Acts and elsewhere; that the bones in the Vatican really are those of the apostle Paul. How do you propose to show that Jesus did magic or rose from the dead?
So far, you’ve shown that there was a Christian community toward the end of the first and beginning of the second century. You haven’t shown that this was anything more than a religious cult like a thousand others, just one that happened to get big.
Your argument so far has been that “early Christians wouldn’t die for a lie”. I’ve outlined the structure of that argument. Now how do you propose to fill in the missing pieces?
July 8th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Oh, and I’m rather amused that whoever wrote the shroud of Turin article at allaboutjesuschrist.org doesn’t know the difference between tempera and tempura. I think finding deep-fried Japanese squid on a piece of 14th century European cloth would be a big deal.
July 8th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
To the 3 of you together, lets see, No answer to the Evolution of Stuff, no answer to the evolution of Stars, the most abundant objects in space, Not much science explaining things here so far.
Lets try an easier one.
Explain the process of creating the Elements. The types of forces to overcome the natural repellant nature of protons. How fusion can create heavy elements above iron which would require the consumption of energy rather than the release of Energy.
The Best answer I have seen is a star exlodes and here come heavy elements. Of course the elements were required to form the star in the first place, but that is just a small problem.
Fez, I am not the one making science up to fit my theory. I have a God who created natural laws to show you that your made up science has to violate the very laws it tries to claim to be based on to work.
My God left His own proof behind. He said (paraphrase) “Look around. You can see by the things I have made that I have Created them.” Do you look around?
July 8th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
PCDR:
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Why don’t you ask a physicist or an astronomer? This is undergraduate-level stuff. Go to your local college campus, find a used copy of last semester’s Introduction to Astronomy textbook, and start reading.
Or, if reading makes your lips too tired, my local university’s astronomy department has open houses and public lectures. See if yours has something comparable, and go ask. In my experience, it’s not hard to get scientists talking about their area of expertise. In fact, the hard part is getting them to shut up.
Of course, this applies only if you’re actually interested in learning, rather than playing stump-the-atheist.
July 8th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
PCDR said:
No; you’re blindly accepting what other people over a period of thousands of years made up and apparently do not have the slightest inclination to engage in the smallest amount of critical thinking.
You’ve made a statement of fact now prove it or admit you’re only here, as arensb has pointed out multiple times, to play games.
My statements of facts contained in the Unicorn Challenge are far stronger than your claims regarding the existence of some supreme power and yet you repeatedly shy away from challenging them. Your Swiss Army Knife of Beliefs has allegedly provided you all the tools you need to disassemble my argument in a self-consistent fashion. Do it without dismantling your own logical structure. Until you’re willing to man up I’m done trying to engage you.
July 8th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Explain the process of creating the Elements. The types of forces to overcome the natural repellant nature of protons. How fusion can create heavy elements above iron which would require the consumption of energy rather than the release of Energy.
The Best answer I have seen is a star exlodes and here come heavy elements. Of course the elements were required to form the star in the first place, but that is just a small problem.
Oh for crying out loud, do you even read your own crap? Hydrogen — one, simple element with only one proton (you do know that much, don’t you?) — is all you need to get a star going, and gravity is quite adequate to start the initial condensation of a nebula. All fusion up to iron is exothermic, so normal stellar fusion is sufficient to produce that out of hydrogen. Trans-ferric elements are produced in supernova explosions (which take place precisely because there is no more energy to be had from fusion, therefore no internal pressure to balance the force of gravity).
I’ve known this stuff since I was a teenager in the astronomy hobby. Where exactly is the problem?
July 8th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
PCDR,
I think the reason you’re encountering as much frustration as you are is that you’re doing a very common (and annoying) thing for creationists to do. You’re throwing out a pile of claims that:
1) Are individually really elementary to answer but collectively start to pile up into a huge workload to respond to.
2) Could generally be looked up on Wikipedia.
3) Demonstrate a deficient basic understanding of the material you’re attacking.
Your heavy elements question is a classic example. The mechanism by which heavy elements are produced is well understood and supported. A short perusal of a basic web site on astronomy would explain it (although Eamon Knight was helpful enough to write a nice summary for you). All it really does is show that you haven’t done your homework and implicitly demand that other people do it for you. Compound this by doing it several times in one post, and you can see how it may get people riled up.
Imagine the response you would get if somebody walked into a Christianity forum and asked with a straight face, “If Jesus is the lamb of God, where is his wool?” Aside from not advancing any useful argument, the question betrays an alarming level of confusion that needs to be addressed at many levels.
If you want to delve into cosmology and physics in general, I’m sure that there are people who would be interested in discussing it, one step at a time. They may even point you toward references that answer your questions with mainstream science and data. For starters, are you satisfied with Eamon Knight’s answer about heavy elements? If not, why not? Let’s get this one finished before moving on to the next one.
July 9th, 2009 at 10:37 am
You’re right, this is basic stuff. Physics can write a formula to show how to hang an elephant from a twig by his tail, but common sense says it will not happen. You can say Hydrogen and Gravity can create a star, but common sense tell you that a cloud of hydrogen will dissipate, not condense into a massive gravitational hole that begins fusion. Where is the massive hydrogen cloud coming from? Where is the Massive gravitational force coming from? Don’t pull some quirky quantum sub-atomic formula out because the amount of matter and gravity to form a selfsustaining fusion reation is not in the quantum physics range or in the sub-atomic range. You guys are the science crowd, why does the theory of star creation have to violate known laws of science?
Simple example: Law of probabilty tells me a fair coin has the exact same chance of throwing 100 heads in a row as throwing 100 tails in a row, which is also the same as 50 heads then 50 tails, which is exactly the same as Head, tail, head, tail, head…. But Common sense tells me that any perfect pattern is probably proof that I am being cheated by a crook.
Science can show me a formula for an elephant to hang by his tail from a tree, but If I see it in real life my common sense tells me that something fishy is going on.
You can argue that a star can form under x billion tons of hydrogen and Gravity of y times the force of Earth’s gravity, but your common sense should ask how you concentrate the matter and where the Gravity comes from and say “that sound fishy based on how thing happen naturally (in other words, in nature, the real world, without outside influence.)
July 9th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Besides Eamon, You wan’t me to check Wikepedia, here is a quote from it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star
A star begins as a collapsing cloud of material composed primarily of hydrogen, along with helium and trace amounts of heavier elements.
So, Stars dying produce heavy elements, and heavy elements produce stars. Genius. What came first the chicken or the egg?
July 9th, 2009 at 10:59 am
So, you are right Arensb, the first stars did form by Magic Man then He put a process in place to form more.
July 9th, 2009 at 11:23 am
PCDR,
I think the problem that’s coming out here is that you’re very confused about what the physics actually says. Starting with the basics:
Are you suggesting that physics doesn’t have equations for strain and tension? If you ask a physicist or engineer if this is possible, he’ll calculate the breaking tension of the twig and tell you exactly what your common sense will tell you. In fact, he’ll likely be able to tell you with far greater precision when the twig will break. If physics was as pathetic as you think it is, we wouldn’t have things like bridges and airplanes.
Common sense is, quite simply, wrong. Historically, when common sense and physics collide, physics wins. Common sense says that a feather will fall slower than a rock in a vacuum, but that’s wrong too.
Let’s file that one under “ultimate origins of the universe” for the moment, if you don’t mind. We’re definitely trying to climb Mt Everest before we can walk here.
The hydrogen itself provides the gravity. Every individual particle in the cloud is attracted to every other particle. That’s how gravity works. They will “fall into each other” over time. Individually, those atoms don’t weigh much. Once you add them all up, they weigh as much as a star and produce a tremendous crushing force. The individual atoms in a school bus are each very light, but if you add them up and put them next to the atoms of Earth, the attraction between them is enough to crush you like a bug.
A better understanding of probability would help here as well. The broadest rules of probability would tell you that you should expect about 50 heads and 50 tails over the course of 100 flips. That’s not all they tell you, though. They will tell you, for example, the probability that you’ll see any number of heads or tails in a row within that sequence of tosses. Probability will tell you a lot about the “texture” and patterns of data you should see in that stream. If a statistician tells you you’re flipping an unfair coin, she’s not using common sense. You can bet she’s using math.
Using common sense over real mathematics in when you’re gambling is a good way to end up in the poorhouse. Try the Mony Hall Problem and see where you go.
July 9th, 2009 at 11:44 am
PCDR wrote: [science tells me sweet little lies. am I it's bitch?]
CHECK, PLEASE!
July 9th, 2009 at 11:54 am
You were the one making it seem like an issue of where things come from. I have no problem not completely understanding the origins of space, time and matter. Stating that I am basing what I know and believe on blind faith demonstrates a considerable amount of ignorance on your part. It’s also very dishonest and a misdirection ploy that I would expect from someone who is incapable of effectively arguing their point. However, since you mentioned blind belief, it is you sir that is the one who has chosen to blind yourself to the facts. To hide behind the guise of “God did it” and “I have a book that explains everything”. You have the blinders on and it’s really sad that you are entwined in your cocoon of ignorance that you cannot understand the fallacies that you are spouting.
Astrophysics and related subjects aren’t my specialty. In fact my specialty about science is limited in comparison to some of the other more educated posters. However, I can tell you a little overview of the formation of stars (stars do not evolve). Stars are not required to perform fusion to create elements above hydrogen. Stars form out of gravity and fusion. The byproducts of this fusion are the elements from Helium all the way up to Ferrum (Iron). Only one element is required to create a star and that is Hydrogen, the most basic of elements. Massive forces such as the accumulation of a mind boggling amount of gravity is required to start fusion, or maybe not. It could be a completely different process, but like I said star formation isn’t my specialty. However I can tell you that stars form by gravity, are held together by gravity and go through phases as they “burn” (in quotes because fusion is not burning) through their fuel. The amount of fuel determines what type of start it will be and how its life will generally go. Throwing this back on you, the only thing you can tell me about star formation from your book is that g-d created them. Interesting that the creation of a billions of billions of stars is just an afterthought, yet it takes 6 days to create earth and then 40 days to flood it.
In response to your last question, I have an incredible amount of books and knowledge on how not only evolution but origins of the universe and a host of other topics. Not to mention a plethora of objects around me that do not point to a creator. What you have is a poorly written book that not only contradicts itself, but almost a third of it is considered obsolete by its very believers.
Your last statement is also fundamentally flawed in that your book should not able to answer many common questions, it should be able to answer ALL common questions. A snippet of questions such as…
When did g-d say “Let there be gravity”? He mentions light, but why not gravity or even sound? Gravity is one of the most important forces to the existence of just about everything, yet it’s omitted even in just a passing statement in the creation of everything. The answer to that could be in the fact that gravity is taken for granted so easily. Everyone and everything is subject to gravity as soon as they are born into the world and is inescapable except by extraordinary means. The writers of the bible couldn’t perceive nor could they understand it as a force so they left it out. Really spoils the idea that an all knowing g-d wrote this all encompassing book yet omitted such an important detail.
Why did g-d create sex for reproduction? Another of those things that are so ingrained in our minds that it has become taken for granted. Some creatures reproduce sexually and some reproduce asexually. Why make two sets of ways to reproduce? If death wasn’t intended to be a part of the original Garden of Eden, then there would be no need to reproduce period. How did an all knowing g-d create all the animals with mates yet screw it up when it came to man and added females later? He either forgot or made a mistake, either way, not the actions of an all powerful all knowing god. Not to mention that if he made Eve out of Adam’s parts wouldn’t he just be making another Adam??? This is forgetting all of the fundamental differences between males and females.
What does the statement “made in our (his) image” mean? If it means that we look exactly like g-d that makes g-d really ugly and really limited. If it means we have the general shape of g-d then chimpanzees could also be considered to be made in his image as well as dogs or hippos. Nearly all mammals have a cranium (in which is a brain along with most of the senses), torso, 4 appendages, fingers and toes and a face (as well breasts, nipples and sexual organs). It is amazing that humans just happen to have the same fundamental layout as thousands of other species. If it means the ability to think and be self aware, that too is not necessarily unique to humans. As an example, some birds (Parrots I believe) and are acknowledged having the same emotional level as a 5 year old child. Not to mention that even my little weiner dogs are able to think their way out of a cage (they use their little noses to push the latch up and over so it opens). The line “Made in his image” sounds more like a writer who wanted to make humans appear more special than they really are.
To keep on track though…
When does g-d mention elements in the bible? The writers could have easily made the statement that he made the earth from tiny particles that are basis of everything. Yet they did not, because they had no way of knowing about atoms and protons and electrons and so on. Therefore they left it out because of their ignorance. You could say it is inferred by other statements in the book of Genesis (or other books), but when do you start and stop inferring things into the bible? When it’s no longer convenient to what you believe? That’s exactly when a splinter group or sect of a religion forms. You could say that the bible may have left some details out because the writers didn’t understand what was being directed to them. Which begs to ask the question what else was left out because of human error??? In the end your book provides no details (or at the very best an interpreted detail) as to what the elements are, what they do or even that they exist. Yet you disbelieve a book that can answer those very same questions.
July 9th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
PCDR:
You wrote earlier:
But given the questions you’re raising, it’s obvious that you know very little about science. I see engineering students all the time, and I know that they need a solid grounding in at least High School-level physics before they start college.
So may I ask what kind of degree you got, and where? Or, if you didn’t get a degree, where you attended and in which discipline?
Or are you “college educated” the way that Kent Hovind has a “Ph.D”?
July 9th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Here is an interesting read.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070913140318.htm
Also your Wiki citation refers to the creation of stars in the presence of other stars. It in no way claims that is how ALL stars have been formed.
July 9th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Simple answer to the elephant twig breaking point. The twig will break when it has T amount of torque(T) applied to it. Torque(T) is the product of Force(F) times Distance(D). Force(F) is Mass(M) times Acceleration(A) so breaking point torque is fixed by the twig, Mass is fixed by the elephant, acceration is fixed by gravity so the variable is Distance. As Distance goes to zero, the torque goes to zero and physics can show that if you tie an elephants tail close enough to the breaking point of the twig, the lever principle (in reverse) will make it possible to do.
You and I both know that is dumb, but the equation of T=FD=MAD shows that if distance is zero, torque is zero. Zero torque means no breaking of the twig.
So this page http://astronomyonline.org/Stars/Introduction.asp has all sorts of equations and theories of how to form a star, including Masses of Hydrogen clouds and Radius of the clouds, and shows it all to be mathmatically possible, but, then has to have that trigger to cause the collapse.
QUOTE
“So what can cause a molecular cloud to collapse?
Nearby stars that have ended their live in a supernova can send a shockwave stimulating collapse
Density waves within a galaxy propagate through the spiral structures that can stimulate collapse
Galaxy collisions can create huge gravitational forces to act of nearby clouds
A nearby Wolf-Rayet star can stimulate collapse
Sequential stellar formation – nearby stars forming close enough that their initial fusion can stimulate collapse
END QUOTE
Notice, more stars cause the next one to form.
I really like these lines:
Within a molecular cloud, the distribution of debris is not always even. Fragmentation is suspected to occur in clouds exceeding
100 Solar masses. Smaller clouds within the large cloud can form stars. These molecular cloud fragments also fall under the Jeans criteria, and does affect the overall molecular clouds ability to continue self-gravitation, but that is an advanced topic.
In other words, in real life these Big clouds are not evenly distributed, so they do not follow these math formulas so we have to make up more advanced formulas to Answer the real world observances.
July 9th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
PCDR:
You say this like it’s a bad thing. Shouldn’t we update our models to match reality?
July 9th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.
1) There’s no “zero” distance possible. What would that look like? It would look like you hanging the elephant from the top of a post and somehow having the elephant dangle straight down. If that were possible, then yes, you could dangle an elephant from a non-existent, zero-length twig. For what it’s worth.
2) As soon as you move from that “zero” distance, you’ll be dealing with shear stress, regardless of torque.
Do you really think that an engineer’s mind would be blown by this puzzle? That it’s impossible to model mathematically? Draw the free body diagram of what you’re describing. It’s a trivial problem, especially if you bother to specify it clearly.
That’s not really an accurate translation. Well, it’s accurate in the sense that the simple formulas do not accurately describe all situations and that more complex equations are necessary to handle the more complex set of variables. What’s not accurate is the idea that the more advanced formulas are somehow imaginary or simply “made up.” If you have a problem with the actual mathematics, let’s see it.
I think that what we’re coming down to is that you’re asserting that mathematics cannot describe basic physical systems. Is that your position? Let’s get into more detail on the elephant example if that’s where you’re going. Until we can get past that, dealing with the details of star formation is just a bridge too far.
July 9th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Funny Joke:
What is the difference between an elephant and a flea?
An Elephant can have fleas, but a flea will never have an elephant.
Very funny for my sons, but if you are an evolutionist, a flea did have an elephant.
July 9th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Very funny considering that Fleas are part of the Phylum Arthropoda. A divergence from the fish-amphibian-reptile-mammal chain which the Elephant eventually came from. Great way to make a strawman argument though, too bad, it’s completely dishonest and demonstrates a complete lack of knowledge of animal phylum and the fundamental differences between them.
That’s ok though, if you are a creationist you think a 600 year old man and his 4 sons built a ship that not even modern shipbuilders would attempt and then stock it with 5-6 million species of animals and still have room left over to for food, water, and exercise. Then manage it for an entire year and after that year managed to bring down all the animals from a mountain.
July 9th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
The flood is a tangent topic, but you seem to think that lots of animals just got into a big pile and died so they could be buried and fossilized together. But this fossilization only happened at distinct periods so the evolutionary progression was shown in stages with nothing in between.
“The story of the fossils agrees with the account of Genesis. In the oldest rocks we did not find a series of fossils covering the gradual changes from the most primitive creatures to developed forms but rather, in the oldest rocks, developed species suddenly appeared. Between every species there was a complete absence of intermediate fossils.”—*D.B. Gower [biochemist], “Scientist Rejects Evolution,” Kentish Times, England, December 11, 1975, p. 4.
The flea elephant joke was just told to me and I thought it was funny. I am sorry, the trilobite had the elephant not the flea.
July 9th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
I apologize for the tanget, I would more like to see your answers to the fine gentlmen and ladies questions from the above (as well as some of my own).
July 9th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Man, a bunch of posts just showed up here. I will answer a few quick ?’s about myself. I have a B.S. (fitting title) degree in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University. I have had classes in Physics, Chemisty, Biology, Statistics, Electronics, Physcology, Sociology, and Mathmatics. I have been a firm Agnostic / Science will find all the answers eventually person until about 10 years ago when I realized that either Life is a chance random process with no purpose and no final point, or it wasn’t.
If all we see is just a random occurances in the universe, then WOW, some pretty impressive random things were organizing into very impressive organized systems. For example Planatary motion, Galaxy Formation, Laws of Nature, etc.
I began to examine the evolution theory. Here is what I saw. People look like monkeys, maybe we came from the same ancestor. Chickens look like T-rex, maybe they had a common ancestor. However, what began to be a challenge to me was things like How does the circulatory system evolve where you need blood, and arteries, and a heart, and veins, and different blood cells all together. Take one part away, the animal dies. Add one part without the others, it is worthless. Take food intake without a way to process it or a stomach without a mouth, or a stomach and mouth without an exit system. You need all the parts for any of them to work. These are very complex systems. So I said to myself, yes, but it all started with simple organisms. Things develop gradually. But I looked at the simple single cell organisms. They are not simple. They have DNA and RNA and Cell walls, and Cytoplasm and ….. Many Many complex systems in a single cell. I looked at Millers Experiment and thought, Hey it is possible Look here, He did it. But He did not make even a simple piece of Life, he just made a jumble of the chemical makup of a simple amino acid. Kind of like saying my frog in a blender from long ago is a frog because all the pieces are in one place, they just look different and are not assembled correctly. Also, His experiement showed that life can not start with Oxygen present, but Life can not survive on earth without Oxygen. Looked like a paradox to me.
Anyway, I am starting to ramble. I am not writing a thesis paper on this site, so I do not use all the mumble Jumble I would if that was the case. I am trying to just discuss in a straightforward way that anybody can understand and if they choose to dig deep to find the actual math, theory etc, they can.
I got mocked by someone a few posts back about the Horsey Kind and the Teeny Kind but I see the crux of the Evolution side to be exactly that.
Dogs change by breeding so someday a dog can be a _________. (Fill in the blank with your own future creature.)
If a dinosaur(read reptile) has enough time he can become a chicken (read bird).
All that has to happen is his scales change to feathers. His bone structure changes. Arms change to Wings, Lungs change, Mouth changes to a beak. This is just the tip of the changes that have to take place.
I have not got all my questions asked yet, but I will list them here because it fits this post.
Cheers, I gotta run.
July 9th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
PCDR:
What’s a “kind”? How can you tell whether two beings are of the same kind or not?
July 10th, 2009 at 9:07 am
I would classify kind probably similar to the family classifaction. However, I am an engineer not a biologist. I could give you examples of different kinds easier than I could define each specific classification. For Example: a cat and an elephant are different, but a lion and tiger are probably the same. A dandelion and a donkey are different, but a horse and a zebra are probably the same.
A lion and tiger can breed and create a liger or a Tion. Is a house cat part of the this kind? That is beyond my scope of knowledge.
A horse and donkey and mule and zebra and jackass are the same kind. Is a deer part of this kind? I don’t know. But I know that an octopus is not.
I think God created amazing abilities for animals to adapt to environment – see Darwin’s finches, but I don’t believe this adaptation allowed Monkeys to grow wings unless you are in the land of Oz. Dogs can be bred for hundreds or thousands of different traits, but you can not breed a dog with Thumbs to text on their cell phones. They are limited by the genes God put into their Kind.
July 10th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Menes777 wrote:
“That’s ok though, if you are a creationist you think a 600 year old man and his 4 sons built a ship that not even modern shipbuilders would attempt and then stock it with 5-6 million species of animals and still have room left over to for food, water, and exercise. Then manage it for an entire year and after that year managed to bring down all the animals from a mountain.”
Many Misconceptions here about what you wrote. Some petty I know but some major.
First Noah had 3 sons. Second, they had as much as 100 years to build. Third, no reason they could not have hired people to help with the work.
The boat was not really a boat as much as a box. All it had to do was float upright.
The size was about 450 ft by 75 ft by 45 ft tall with three levels. This provides over 100000 square feet of space but still tiny by modern ship sizes. Also it only had to last for 1 year, not be seaworthy for decades.
Finally. you listed 5-6 million species of animals. Many misconceptions here too. Only animals that breathed and lived on land were included. This would be probably most animals in the Amniota Kingdom which currently only has about 20000 species. Suppose a few kinds are canine, bovine, equine, and feline. The number of species in each of those kinds would be very high, but only 4 kinds. Lets pretend that each kind has 10 species on average. This only leaves 2000 kinds. With over 100000 square ft that is 50 sq ft per kind. Some kinds do not need 50 sq ft. for example the kinds that include the snake or the rodent or the canary. Also each level is 15 ft (minus the floor height) high. Cages could be stacked of smaller kinds creating many more square feet. Also kinds can be mixed in common cages. (Most birds, most sheep, goats, pigs, most horse, deer etc.
Also if you were taking animals to repopulate the earth, you would probably take younger juvinile animals. 1 year old elephant kind rather than 11 ft tall ones. Young lions rather than Savannah hunters.
This page is fairly comprehensive without being boring on some more Ark Q and A. http://www.thewordout.net/pages/page.asp?page_id=56530
July 10th, 2009 at 10:46 am
Okay, but what are the criteria? How can you — or, more to the point, how can someone else — tell whether two beings are in the same kind or not? You seem to be using “well, they look different” as your main criterion. But that would put broccoli and cauliflower in different kinds, even though they’re the same species.
Well, sure. Monkeys are tetrapods, with four limbs. The flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz had six limbs.
Why? Dogs already have thumbs (illustration). Why couldn’t they be bred to use them for manipulating objects?
You’re making an argument from personal incredulity: “I can’t believe X, therefore X isn’t true.” I’m sorry, but reality isn’t limited by your imagination.
Earlier, you mentioned having questions about living beings: how the circulatory system could have formed, that sort of thing. Did you ever consider asking a biologist, or reading a biology textbook? Or, hell, even looking it up on Wikipedia?
July 10th, 2009 at 11:24 am
I’m not sure I can go much beyond saying that it’s really alarming to find an electrical engineer who would trot out the elephant and coin flipping claims that you made. I can’t fully understand how somebody with an education very similar to mine could have gotten through and not consider those elementary issues to be dealt with in basic lower division classes.
Your argument against such things so far appears to be that they don’t make you feel good emotionally or don’t satisfy you on some vague instinctive grounds. I can’t imagine how you can feel that way and still design power supplies or whatever your specialty is (I’m assuming it’s not communications or signal processing–the coin flip example would be death to any such endeavors).
So far, you’ve basically rejected mathematics as a way to model the physical world. I can see how if you do that, a young earth and Noah’s ark could make perfect sense. I’m just not sure how to argue against it if you reject quantitative reasoning as a basic way of understanding the world.
July 10th, 2009 at 11:42 am
PCDR:
That’s a huge load of horseshit, and you should know it. Sorry to be so blunt, but anyone who still believes in Noah’s flood isn’t thinking straight.
For one thing, you can’t build a boat, or barge, or any kind of vessel of the size ye arke is supposed to have been, out of wood. You just can’t. If the British Royal Navy couldn’t do it in the 19th century, a bunch of bronze age people surely couldn’t. I know you want to say that it didn’t need to sail anywhere, just float. But it wouldn’t. It would leak like a sieve. You claim to be an engineer. Look at the stresses involved.
For another, you expect us to believe that eight impossibly-old people managed to tend however many thousands of animals for a year. Sorry, but that doesn’t even pass the giggle test. Especially when you say that they were juveniles, which typically require more care than adults.
In order to make room on ye arke, you resort to fuzzily-defined “kinds”, which presumably “microevolved” or “adapted” to the huge variety of living beings we see today. If you look in the book of Isaiah (late 8th century BCE), you’ll see that it mentions horses (2:7) and donkeys (21:7), cobras and vipers (11:8, NIV), dogs (56:10) and wolves (65:25). This means that the “horsey” pair would have had to evolve into separate species in just a few thousand years, orders of magnitude faster than any biologist would dare claim.
Oh, and those eight people? They would have been able to carry at most 16 alleles of any given gene. And yet, human genes like HLA B have hundreds of known alleles.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’ll refer you to Torpedo Ye Arke for more. But the short answer is, the ark story is a fairy tale. Give it up.
Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the complete and utter lack of any evidence for a global flood.
July 10th, 2009 at 11:45 am
Evidence?
Evidence?
Evidence?
Evidence?
Evidence?
Evidence? And why were none of the larger sauropsids included? Or the unicorns?
You’re attempting to debate science. Either provide a usable scientific definition of ‘kind’ or just STFU about it, be man enough to admit you’re wrong, and bring up something else to demonstrate your ignorance.
July 10th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Exactly! Yet you use all sorts of misconceptions to prove your point. Maybe use some of the brainpower not to just to attempt to prove your belief correct, but to really understand the facts that you have before you. Maybe the facts are incomplete or missing, but scientific facts will never boil down to “g-d must have done it” or “a miracle must have happened”.
If you look at a snowflake under a microscope it is an incredibly beautiful work of art and no two snowflakes are alike, yet is it created by anyone? Of course not, we all know that snowflakes are the result of the crystalline structures that form when water freezes. The way it forms is by chance, the properties of water freezing, and by the variables of the environment around it. That is the same as evolution. The evolution of life (not the origin of it) has happened by chance, directed by properties of elements and compounds, and the variables caused by the environment. Not chance that it happened at all, but chance that spiders happened to have 8 legs instead of 10, that humans have two arms instead of four and that cats have excellent night vision (just to name an extremely small fraction).
That is one of the hugest misconceptions about evolution is that when the phrase “by chance” is used, it’s not an all or nothing deal. It’s only “by chance” that this variety of evolution occurred as it has. Similar to rolling a 6 sided dice, you will always get a number between 1 and 6. There is never a chance of getting no number. The same as evolution, except for the dice is much much larger.
July 10th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Another problem you have to consider is the water problem. I did some fairly rough calculations on how much water would be required for about a year’s voyage at sea (314 days) for 16,000 animals.
Assuming the ark is your dimensions above, it’s about 41,006 cubic meters (1,518,750 cubic feet).
16,000 animals x 314 days x 1 liter/day = 5,024,000 Liters consumed the entire trip. – Now that is 1 liter for not only consumption but for sanitation and cleaning. Meaning one half of a two liter bottle per day for a year.
5,024,000 Liters = ~ 5,024 cubic meters of space or about 12.3% of the entire space available on the ark. Now either Noah had an extremely sophisticated water distribution system to get the water from a large vat to the rest of the ship or he had to store it in barrels, which in turn would take up more space and require more time in watering and cleaning the animals. The big vat theory also has some problems as it would either take up most of one deck level or would extend down below the water level. Either way it would be a festering zone for algae and bacteria, not to mention possible contamination by the outside water from leakage. But that 1 liter is really not realistic, let’s look at a more realistic number.
16,000 animals x 314 days x 5 liter/day = 25,120,000 Liters consumed the entire trip.
5 liters seems a bit more realistic when you take into account consumption as well as sanitation and even waste. You also have to consider that if dried foods are used (which another creationist states as part of his ark model) that water intake must increase sometimes as much as 2 fold (sometimes 3).
25,120,000 Liters = ~ 25,120 Cubic Meters.
Houston we have a problem! That is 61.3% of the ENTIRE space of the ark used for only water??? That might give some insights into why a mission to Mars for a handful of people is a very risky proposal. Ignoring the difficulties of storing, accessing and even filling the ark with enough fresh water, there still needs to be room left over for food, the animals and a way to get to those animals in a way that they can be cared for. Not to mention ventilation for fresh air and exercise.
July 10th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Fez:
Ah, but unicorns were included. As were dragons and cockatrices.
July 10th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Fun reading for all who haven’t happened up on it before: http://www.skepticreport.com/creationism/sillyflood.htm
July 10th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
arensb said:
But that’s unpossible! PCDR himself said they don’t exist!
July 10th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
We’re wasting our time here, of course, but I’ll make two points re our obtuse respondent:
I have a B.S. (fitting title) degree in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University. I have had classes in Physics, Chemisty, Biology, Statistics, Electronics, Physcology, Sociology, and Mathmatics.
I also have an undergrad degree in EE. Granted, I probably had an unusually strong physics component to my career (how many EEs take a half-course Special Rel & QM?), but I am astounded that anyone could get that that far and be unaware that mass generates its own gravity, and that a largish cloud of hydrogen, absent other influences, will collapse until its internal pressure balances the force of gravity (and if it is massive enough, this will be beyond the point at which protons start getting sqeezed into helium). That this may be contrary to “common sense” merely illustrates that naive intuitions based on terrestrial experience are unreliable outside that context.
And this:
So, you are right Arensb, the first stars did form by Magic Man then He put a process in place to form more.
The “Magic Man” reference is intended as a reductio absurdum of the creationist position. No adult is satisfied with “happens by magic” as an explanation. Indeed, everyone over the age of about five recognizes that, not as an explanation, but a refusal to provide one, a conversation stopper. And yet some adults seem to think that “God did it” is a perfectly reasonable answer to the question “How did X happen?” — unaware that it is the logical equivalent of “by magic”.
But here, even when the equivalence is made explicit, our friend is content to duck in to the punch.
Jesus wept.
July 13th, 2009 at 10:25 am
Okay, you are all having fun with your mocking and that is fine. I can take it. However, you like to point out your calculations, lets look at some more.
The Universe exists. One of two options are possible.
1. It always existed.
2. It had a beginning.
The first one violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. If it always existed it would now be absolute zero for temp and no motion.
The second one violates the 1st law of thermodynamics. Nothing can be created from nothing.
Which Law are you going to through out?
July 13th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Sorry for the Misspelling. Which Law are you going to throw out?
Second, the argument of water on the ark is foolish. It was a flood. Water could be brought into the ark through any number of means easiest would be internal plumbing from the outside. Also, Food stocks need to take into account hibernation.
July 13th, 2009 at 11:26 am
The Universe exists. One of two options are possible.
1. It always existed.
2. It had a beginning.
The first one violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. If it always existed it would now be absolute zero for temp and no motion.
The second one violates the 1st law of thermodynamics. Nothing can be created from nothing.
Which Law are you going to through out?
And why does the same argument not apply to God? Oh right: he’s magic.
July 13th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
My study of the origin of the Universe led me to this conclusion:
Something outside of the laws of nature was involved “in the beginning” of time space and matter. Even the “science” of the Big Bang Theory violates the scientific laws it is trying to match up with.
So My question still stands.. What Laws of Science is the Universe allowed to throw out and when is it allowed to violate them?
Leave my faith in God out of it for the time being.
July 13th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Interesting quote from Francis Crick – discoverer of DNA “biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see is not designed, but rather evolved”
Sounds a lot like Romans Chapter 1 Verse 20-23 “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.
So if you cover your eyes and tell keep reminding yourself that the incredible detail and complexity of living things is not really evidence of a creator you may be able to convince yourself that evolution could happen. Francis Crick is not a believer in creationism by the way.
July 13th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
PCDR:
The Index to Creationist Claims is a wonderful thing. Its response to your claim CF101 reads:
July 13th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
arensb,
BINGO!
July 13th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
pcdr,
Good, because I’m not done yet. Since you want to toss quotes around:
July 13th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
PCDR:
I’ll see your Bible and raise you a Bhagavad-gītā:
I assume you won’t dispute the existence of the Himalayas, the oceans, or the moon. So presumably you agree that Krishna is the One True God™, right?
But even if we set that aside for a moment, can you explain why, when the topic is biology, we should place an ancient book written by ignorant people above the professional opinion of a living, Nobel prize winning biologist?
I mean, if I were interested in, say, TCP packet routing, I’d pay attention to what someone like Vint Cerf has to say. I wouldn’t normally turn to the Tao Te Ching or The Epic of Gilgamesh.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
To Arensb
1.Formation of the universe from nothing need not violate conservation of energy. The gravitational potential energy of a gravitational field is a negative energy. When all the gravitational potential energy is added to all the other energy in the universe, it might sum to zero (Guth 1997, 9-12,271-276; Tryon 1973).
This is saying what? It sounds like nothing split into positive energy(energy plus stuff) plus gravity which is negative energy. So really the initial nothing is still nothing, it just looks like something for a while until the positive energy runs out because the negative energy of gravity cancels it and you end up with nothing again.
I saw an episode of super powers team that my sons were watching that had evil superheros from bizarro land which were opposites of good superheros. This sounds like your type of world.
This also reminds me of a riddle asking how to get out of a locked room with only a table and a saw. You take the saw and cut the table in half. You then take the two halves and put them back together to make a Whole (hole) and you escape through the hole.
Your magic man seems to have pronounced gravity the “Dark side of the Force” and so really there was nothing in the beginning. Now we still have nothing, it just looks really cool and organized, and in the end there will be nothing. AMAZING. I can’t believe more people are not buying that concept. It is so clear and thought out.
God has written that in the end times there will be poeple who are willfully ignorant of the truth and will be willing to trade the Glory of the our created and wonderful souls for a lie.
Do you really in your heart and brain believe that all you see touch feel smell observe measure test and experience came from nothing 13.7 billion years ago?
July 13th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Another interesting evolution unsolved mystery. Tell me about the evolution of intelligence. I am assuming by your posts that you consider yourselves intelligent. I do not argue that you are. At the least you are educated in many topics which is the beginning of wisdom.
So, how do chemicals made up of subatomic particles made up of energy that is the opposite of gravity have the abilty to think, or to remember, or to propose, or to imagine, or to respond to stimuli?
How does hydrogen and carbon and oxygen and calcium and sodium and the other elements that make up the human body have the ability to have intelligence and to even begin to be self aware and to discover the laws of math and physics and chemistry and biology?
July 13th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Fez likes quotes, try these:
“I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which it’s been applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books of the future. Posterity will marvel that so flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity that it has.” Malcolm Muggeridge, journalist and philosopher (Pascal Lectures, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada).
“Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution, we do not have one iota of fact.” Dr. T. N. Tahmisian, Atomic Energy Commission, USA.
“Darwinian science inevitably will, and should have, legal, political and moral consequences.” L. Tiger, an anthropologist at Rutgers (as presented in Scientific American, October 1995, pg. 181).
July 13th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
A ways back a post wanted creationism to propose a list of tests that would disprove it. If the tests all failed it would be a way to further cement the theory as a law. I have a few.
Show something spontaneouslyarising from nothing.
Show something alive coming from something with no living background.
Show a mutation that adds something new to an organism rather than remove something.
Show how time makes something non living become more orderly and structured rather than more chaotic.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
I guess no one has ever died of thirst at sea because they drank the sea water. rolls eyes
Not to mention, have you ever heard the saying, “don’t drink the flood water???”. Every wonder why they needed water toted into New Orleans? How about any other flooded region?
What you are thinking of is a complex water pumping/purification/desalination system that is present on modern day ships. Even a pumping system into the ship would be highly complex and require a huge amount of energy to accomplish. Something that was no attempted until well into the 20th century. The other two technologies were not practical until much much later in history. Yet you are saying that he utilized an advanced technology that somehow vanished after immediately the flood, but Noah surely would have used and passed onto his children??? Not to mention that if they drank the water no doubt contaminated by all those dead animals floating around as well as plant decomposition and various other vectors in the water they would become horribly ill. No doubt some of the animals could but some could not, which would complicate a dire situation even more.
What is foolish is how you are ignoring simple facts. Like how that even if a mere 12000 animals were on the ship, the 8 crew men and women would have less than a minute per animal to feed, water, and care for the beasts (including cleaning cages, exercising, and grooming). Even that would be working almost 24 hours a day with no rest, no time for themselves, and no time to eat or maintain that huge barge.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
PCDR:
Go to your kitchen and put one part water and one part oil into a transparent glass. Shake vigorously. Note the oil droplets in the water, the water droplets in the oil, and the generally foamy appearance of the stuff (if you’ve shaken hard).
Now put the glass on a counter and stand back. Come back in a few minutes and see whether the stuff in the glass is more chaotic, more ordered, or about the same. Report.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
menes777:
You’re forgetting that Noah et al. had to be incredibly tough to begin with: after all, they had to carry a whole raft (no pun intended) of bacteria and viruses that require a human host to survive, like various strains of flu, polio, AIDS, and so forth. If they could survive a year infected with a few score deadly diseases, then drinking a tall glass of E. Coli Cola afterwards would be a piece of cake.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
PCDR,
Since you seem so interested in origins, why not answer where your g-d came from??? That should be in your big book of common questions right?
July 13th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Excellent points. Noah must have syphilis, that’s why he was crazy enough to try a make up a story like that.
There was an excellent documentary on Discovery (I think) about how that it is more likely that Noah was on a boat that was swept out to sea in a huge rainstorm during the night. So to him it appeared that the whole world was flooded, yet he was just too far away from land to see it. Once he did find land his story was changed (as oral stories typically do) and possibly even twisted and perverted to be used as a mythical story in which someone attempts to show how powerful their g-d is. Sort of like a kids game of my dad is better than your dad kind of thing. Perhaps it was to use an existing myth as a conversion tool. Either way the story itself really makes your g-d look weak, petty and truly incompetent. With the story itself cobbled together so badly that the writers seemed to have no idea what it would really take to pull off.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Darwin’s Theory of Evolution – Slowly But Surely…
Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is a slow gradual process. Darwin wrote, “…Natural selection acts only by taking advantage of slight successive variations; she can never take a great and sudden leap, but must advance by short and sure, though slow steps.” [1] Thus, Darwin conceded that, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” [2] Such a complex organ would be known as an “irreducibly complex system”. An irreducibly complex system is one composed of multiple parts, all of which are necessary for the system to function. If even one part is missing, the entire system will fail to function. Every individual part is integral. [3] Thus, such a system could not have evolved slowly, piece by piece. The common mousetrap is an everyday non-biological example of irreducible complexity. It is composed of five basic parts: a catch (to hold the bait), a powerful spring, a thin rod called “the hammer,” a holding bar to secure the hammer in place, and a platform to mount the trap. If any one of these parts is missing, the mechanism will not work. Each individual part is integral. The mousetrap is irreducibly complex. [4]
Darwin’s Theory of Evolution – A Theory In Crisis
Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is a theory in crisis in light of the tremendous advances we’ve made in molecular biology, biochemistry and genetics over the past fifty years. We now know that there are in fact tens of thousands of irreducibly complex systems on the cellular level. Specified complexity pervades the microscopic biological world. Molecular biologist Michael Denton wrote, “Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than 10-12 grams, each is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machinery built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world.” [5]
And we don’t need a microscope to observe irreducible complexity. The eye, the ear and the heart are all examples of irreducible complexity, though they were not recognized as such in Darwin’s day. Nevertheless, Darwin confessed, “To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.” [6]
July 13th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
When did the oceans begin to get salty? Are they still getting saltier? Can you put a fresh water fish in fresh water, then slowly add salt until you have the level of salt in the oceans, but the fresh water fish still be alive?
The oceans are getting saltier due to salt being added by river runoff and water being removed by evaporation. So, if they are getting saltier, that means in the past they used to be …. that is right, less salty. Is there any reason the flood was not fresh water, and the initial runnoff as the land and mountains rose up and the layers formed that salt was added to the oceans?
http://creation.com/images/pdfs/cabook/chapter14.pdf Contains many points on fish and salt / fresh water.
July 13th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
PCDR:
Right. The total energy budget of the universe appears to be zero. All the stuff we see around us, like galaxies and whatnot, are just temporary. So what’s the problem?
July 13th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Since you all are on a germ kick, how is it possible given the vast amount of deadly germs, that over the last however millions of years either the germs did not kill everyone and thing, or every person / animal evolved immunity to them? Why do germs/viruses/bacteria still make people sick?
July 13th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Arensb, you sound like the government.
We don’t have any money so we will spend a bunch of what we don’t have to create a stimulus that will create a bunch of money to replace what we spent that we did not have.
How did the NO ENERGY system split into energy and anti-energy? How Did Nothing become something plus anti-something?
At least I have the guts to admit that that I am trusting in the something that started stuff from nothing. Menes777 brings up the My Dad VS Your Dad argument. Yours sounds like My science contradicts itself but that makes it true because it is science not faith. Science by definition is true even when obviously absurd.
July 13th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Arensb: Once again you make my point.
you say
“Go to your kitchen and put one part water and one part oil into a transparent glass. Shake vigorously. Note the oil droplets in the water, the water droplets in the oil, and the generally foamy appearance of the stuff (if you’ve shaken hard).
Now put the glass on a counter and stand back. Come back in a few minutes and see whether the stuff in the glass is more chaotic, more ordered, or about the same. Report.”
You created something. An Oil Water Mix in a Glass jar in suspension. Add time what do you get? Do you get a fine vinigarette for your salad? No it “breaks down” into one part oil and one part water. Give it more time the lid will rust into iron oxide and fall apart the liquid evaporates and you are left with a dried crud in the bottom of a glass jar which over time will “melt” into a pile of silica as glass in a vertical plane will do. Now you have a pile of silica, what ever crud was in the water and oil when you added it to the jar, and watervapor. I do not see something better, I see something broken down.
Next. I notice you avoided the 3 points before that with even bigger implications for your theory.
July 13th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
PCDR:
Correction: the Bible says that. You haven’t demonstrated that any gods were involved in its composition.
And it occurs to me that if I were pushing an idea that I suspected was a load of dingo’s kidneys, I’d put in a bit saying that anyone who tries to talk you out of it is to be ignored. I’ve been told that Scientologists teach that anyone who tries to tell you that Scientology is bullshit has been brainwashed by their body Thetans, or something like that.
So it would appear that you’ve run out of arguments. You know that there’s no good objective evidence for your beliefs, but you want to keep believing them anyway, so you’ve retreated to “Well, the Bible says so!”, which of course is just a fig leaf for “I believe it because I want to.”
July 13th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
PCDR blatted:
Cupcake you’ve demonstrated some magnificently developed ignorance claiming anyone besides yourself has avoided any points. You’ve talked yourself in circles, down the drain, and into the septic. Congratulations, you’ve finally made it to the top!
July 13th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
http://www.allaboutscience.org/evolution-of-the-human-brain-faq.htm
July 13th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Could God create a moron so dense that not even He could convince it of it’s ignorance?
July 13th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
For anyone here with a lot of time and interest here is some well documented short pages on a variety of topics. This is not my site so I am not self-promoting here, just interesting reading.
http://www.big-bang-theory.com/
Not sure who this is but there is an interesting thread about a mans journey which is similar to mine.
http://www.allaboutthejourney.org/
I challange to you read it with an open mind and see what you find.
July 13th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Ok, I get it. Either you’re spamming for the allabout* ministries or one of the soon-to-appear comments is going to be, “Babba Booey! Babba Booey! Howard Stern’s penis!”
July 13th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
First when you say germs/viruses/bacteria, it’s like you are saying you have these choices to eat, fish/trout/salmon. Germ is the classification name for pathogens (Viral, Bacteria, Fungal and Prion).
Secondly, what vast amount of deadly germs? You seem to act like the world is teaming with Ebola and Hemorrhagic Fever. Show me one virus that is 100% lethal to it’s host, is 100% communicable, is not resistable, has no carriers only infected and that is not cross species spread. None you can think of? That’s right you can’t because a virus that deadly will kill it’s way to extinction, especially if it has a quick incubation period. Really soon it runs out of people to infect and either disappears or goes into some form of spore or long term inactivity. Viral infections like Ebola can be spread from bats who only happen to be carriers of it. As long as both exist, there will be Ebola. Bubonic plague is carried by fleas (sometimes on rats) who it is not lethal to. It’s only limited by how far the rats and the fleas can spread.
Yes a Virus or a Bacteria might go extinct but they are like a Hydra, you kill one and 3 others take their place.
Thirdly, why would a pathogen that makes a human only sick go extinct? We know the Influenza virus mutates almost constantly (Avian and Swine kinds alike), people get sick by bacteria that grows in rotting (or spoiled) food. Someone might grow to be immune to one strain of the flu, but that is one in trillions and trillions (or more) of strains out there. Don’t even try to become immune to certain bacteria (then again go ahead and try with Yersinia pestis), because it just won’t work. Considering how many bacteria live in the human body you don’t want to.
Just that question alone makes me wonder what caliber of person you really are. If you have such trouble understanding the dynamics of how humans interact with pathogens and how they exist, explaining the more in depth topics might be in vain.
July 13th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Surely you took thermal physics in the process of getting your EE degree. Since you’re dealing with a very mathematical law here, you should probably specify how you’re quantifying “order” and “breakdown” in this system. There’s nothing more annoying to a physicist than people who go back and forth between touchy-feely definitions of “order” and actual thermodynamic quantities whenever it suits them. You’re trying to wrap your intuitive feelings in the respectability of a mathematical law without actually showing how the system relates to that law. That doesn’t fly.
July 13th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
How did the NO ENERGY system split into energy and anti-energy? How Did Nothing become something plus anti-something?
Once again, PCDR reveals he slept through his physics courses…..
July 13th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
From his questions and his replies, I wouldn’t say he slept through them. I think he was wide awake, he just didn’t understand the material as well he thought he did. Yet rather than admit he doesn’t truly understand he’s applied his flawed understanding to try and make his his belief more rational and more attractive.
July 13th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
PCDR:
Say, what kind of mileage do you get out of those goalposts?
July 14th, 2009 at 9:17 am
Menes777:
You made my point about germs, I was not the one who said Noah had to be infected with every germ out there. They can be carried on other host animals, mutate, grow on dead things (hummm where would dead things be in a global flood?).
Eamon Knight:
You mock my physics course. My physics had facts and truth in it. Your physics apparantly has chemicals elements, solar systems, and entire galaxies forming from nothing (ABSOLUTLY NOTHING). You offer no possible science how it happens but you claim it to be established fact then mock me.
By the way, I did sleep through a lot of college classes and still graduated with honors because when you apply math and truth to problems you only have one possible correct answer. That is Truth. If you are smart enough to apply the correct math, you do not need the indocrination of a teachers opinions to learn.
Fez:
for as active as you are on this site you appear to be the sidekick. You talk a lot but do not say anything. Just mock and make stupid unrelated comments.
Arensb:
You are right. What is order? Is a library in order when the books are arranged by size? Is a watch in order when the parts are arranged by shape? Is a house in order when it is built or when all the materials are in piles by wood, nails, shingles, insulation? Is a jar of oil and water in order when it is separated or when it is mixed?
So what? Lets use the word complexity rather than order. Still not the perfect word I am sure, but maybe more accurate than ordered. Does time make things more complex or less complex? There is a dead deer on the side of the road by my place. The first day all you had was a deer. Only deer parts in a very complex system. One week later the system was even more complex with less order. There were maggots visible, and I am sure one could test the carcass for a plethora of other bacteria. However the deer parts were no longer in their correct places. Things were missing, hair had dissappeared, rib cage had collapsed. In a few more weeks, there will no longer be flesh, maybe some skin, and some bones. I am sure the coyotes will find the carcass and some of the bones will dissapper. The vultures will come and the skin will be shredded.
Is the system more complex because we added over time insects and bacteria and carnivores? I argue the deer became broken down into a loose and then scattered bunch of elements. Less order, less complex.
July 14th, 2009 at 9:42 am
PCDR:
It doesn’t matter what word you use, as long as you define it. What do you mean by “order” or “complexity”, and how can I tell whether system A exhibits more or less order or complexity than system B?
Basically, I’m asking you to go through your own questions and answer them, in such a way that I can compare the relative complexity of two systems. Until we can agree on the definition of terms, there’s no point in having a conversation.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:47 am
PCDR:
I wasn’t talking about “germs” in general. I was talking specifically about the ones that require a human host to survive.
You probably don’t realize this, but there is more variety among bacteria than among all the eukaryotes (I’m not sure how viruses rank, but I’m sure there’s a lot of variety there as well). Saying that “there are bacteria that live in dead trees, therefore smallpox didn’t need to infect Noah’s family to survive” is as wrong as saying “there are eukaryotes (like ferns and oaks) that live in dirt, therefore eukaryotes like salmon and sparrows can live in dirt”.
Basically, all of your rationalizations for Ye Floode are just-so stories that, if you actually believe them, betray a vast and tragic ignorance.
July 14th, 2009 at 11:07 am
pcdr sez:
Wow, and it only took you a bit over a month and a dozen or so comments to figure that out.
Yes, when someone as willfully ignorant as yourself attempts to set up shop I’ll pop in as the unofficial Office of Citizens Zoning Enforcement Office. I have an exceedingly low tolerance for people dumber than myself. Cope, or STFU and leave.
Funny though,for all of your bloviating, whining, and painfully juvenile attempts at subterfuge, the total of which probably far exceed my own contributory word count here over the years, you too have said nothing. Nothing of consequence, anyway.
July 14th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Arensb:
Smallpox is a virus that infects humans. Either it kills the human, or the human has the genetic makeup to become immune to it. How many years would it take before either the Smallpox mutates and kills all humans or all humans have been born from someone with the genetic makeup to become immune to smallpox?
If you have a 3.7 billion years of life and x million years of the Homo genus why is smallpox still around.
Plus your human carrier issue on the ark holds for the 3.x billion years since viruses evolved before humans evolved. Where did the virus live then?
Maybe your math wizards on this site can calculate the probability of a Human only carried virus evolving only after humans were around to carry it.
July 14th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Smallpox is a virus of the Genus type Orthopoxvirus, which includes Cowpox, Monkeypox, Camelpox, Rabbitpox, etc… In your viewpoint there is all or nothing. This is a typical viewpoint that I find quite prevalent among xians. Every human has the genetic makeup to become immune to any virus. It’s only a matter of if the particularly person can outlive the virus long enough to make the immunity mean anything. There is not just a person living because they were immune or developed the immunity or dying because they did not. The reason they lived or died is based on many factors that when combined together determine if a person can outlive the infection.
The Smallpox virus may mutate (and has into things like Hemorrhagic Smallpox) but the human immunity to the virus just isn’t to the smallpox. It’s any immunity to a virus like the smallpox. That is how the vaccine Cowpox makes humans immune to Smallpox. It just doesn’t make humans immune to Cowpox, it makes them immune to things like Cowpox, such as Smallpox.
Even if Smallpox mutated into some lethal virus, for it wipe out man, it would still take the following criteria that I explained above. 100% lethality (no virus is), 100% communicability (no virus is), and it must have a mechanism to travel everywhere that humans are (ie airborne with 100% survivability outside a host). Which is of course absurd, but even if it were that way a large number of humans would die, but not every human.
Lastly, you are assuming that immunities are passed down from generation to generation without any loss of that immunity along the way. Even if an immunity is passed down. I am pretty sure my mom and dad got the chicken pox, but I too got chicken pox. My parents were given vaccines to Smallpox, but I didn’t have an immunity to it when I was born. How about TB, that is lethal yet it hasn’t killed itself off by killing off the human race. Google it and see what you can learn about TB, might help you understand more.
Is it really hard to understand that the dynamics of viral infections and immunities are not as cut and dry as you wold like them to be???
July 14th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
There’s no reason to assume that either one of these will be the end state of things.
Viruses that lived only in humans didn’t exist before there were humans. It’s really that simple. If a virus happened to incur some mutation that would make it human-specific before humans were around, it died off. This is really only a problem if you assume that all life has always been around in the same (or largely similar) form. That’s your problem, not ours.
I can calculate the probability of a human-only virus evolving any time before humans were around: zero. The question you’re asking is akin to, “Isn’t it a weird coincidence that companies only started offering car insurance AFTER cars were invented?”
Personally, I don’t think that smallpox is a really good example of this, because anybody whose point of view accommodates so-called “microevolution” can simply say that it “microevolved” from some more benign virus. I’m much more interested in dealing with more complex parasites that often deal with only one host.
Even more interesting is whether Noah was specifically commanded to do things like drop koalas off only in Australia where they could get eucalyptus or if he did that on his own.
July 14th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
PCDR:
Dude, you’re embarrassing yourself.
I mean, I realize that you reject huge tracts of human knowledge, but you could at least pretend to try to mount a serious attack on science. Here, you’re not even trying. Your argument here is on a par with “if gravity is real, why doesn’t the moon fall out of the sky?”
At this point, it’s abundantly clear that you have no idea what evolution is about. If you’ll accept some friendly advice, the best thing you could do would be to read a couple of books: one on how science works (I think Michael Shermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things is a good one, but it’s on loan to someone. John Allen Paulos’s Innumeracy is a classic. Richard Feynman’s Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! is laugh-out-loud funny in parts. Anyone else wanna jump in with a recommendation?). And one or two on evolution, written by an evolutionary biologist, so that you at least know what scientists claim, as opposed to the caricature you have in mind.
Richard Dawkins’s The Blind Watchmaker and Climbing Mount Improbable are both very clearly written. Stephen Jay Gould’s collections of articles are also quite good, but I can’t think of a specific one to recommend at the moment. Neil Shubin’s Your Inner Fish is also quite good, and more recent than the others I’ve mentioned.
I’m not asking you to agree with those books. I’m not even asking you to keep an open mind. All I’m asking is that you educate yourself enough that you can stop attacking straw men. Think of it as “know thy enemy”.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
I have been going back through the questions I have been asked, and the main one I ignored the most is – (in many variations) Prove your God. I did not ignore it because I had no answer, but I wanted to point out some shortcomings of evolution first.
Here is the beginning of my answer. Fez, are you ready to mock?
I will start with proof of a god. By my definition a god is something that is more complex and outside the realm of human understanding. In my definition a god can not be understood completely or explained completely by humans because if we could, we could substitute something or someone for the god that had all the same attributes. I am not ducking the question here, I am just defining what I will be talking about. An imperfect example would be my dog and me. My dog knows that I exist and that I am his master. I (and other humans) are way more complex than my dog could ever imagine. My dog can not tell other dogs all about me because other dogs can not understand everything about me. My dog is able to recognize me and understand my voice. My dog can communicate with me when he is hungry or hurt or happy or scared. My dog will protect me from other dogs if I am around, but if I am not around there is no way my dog could show another dog who his master is.
That became a long paragraph to say, I can not describe a god completely because that would mean that the god does not meet my definition of a god. We can debate the definition of a god if you would like, but for now I will give you my proof of a god that fits my definition.
In math or even chemistry, when you are listing a proof, there are many steps usually. If any of the steps are untrue or just plain wrong, the entire proof is incorrect even if some or all of the other steps are true. This concept is true in nature also. For any object, either animal, vegetable or mineral, 1 of 2 things is true by definition. Either it made itself, or it was made(formed) by outside forces. To define, I would say that a leaf on a tree was formed by the tree. I would say that an arrowhead found in the forest was formed by a person. I would say that a rock was formed by heat and pressure. I would say that a watch,(to pull from the Blind Watchmaker by Dawkins) was made by a chinese company or if an old watch, maybe a swiss watchmaker. I can not think of any examples of something that made itself. Can You? To get back to the steps of my proof, if any of the steps in the formation of anything can not be true, then the proof of how it formed can not be true no matter how many other steps are true. So a leaf formed by a tree formed by a nut formed by a tree (etc insert 1000s of years) formed by a spore formed by a fern formed by a (I don’t know, see I admit when I am ignorant) maybe a fungus, formed by a single cell life form, formed by a aminoid, formed by a volcano and lightning, formed by a supernova dying, formed by a hydrogen cloud formed by a big bang formed by nothing that created itself. I do not by nothing creating itself creating a leaf.
Take the watch formed by the watchmaker from materials formed by heat and pressure, formed by a supernova… back to nothing creating itself.
Lets get real complex, take the intelligence displayed by arensb and others here. I admit they have studied many more sources than I have. The sources have vast amount of intelligence. This intelligence is stored where? In a grey pile of carbon hydrogen oxygen and other elements mixed together. What is a brain? How did the elements create the ablilty to think and reason and debate and feel and love and hate and mock and cheer. I don’t even have to take this one back to the big bang before reason and intelligence can say DID NOT EVOLVE from goo in a primordial soup.
So the two conclusions one can reach is that #1: Nothing Nowhere randomly formed the order and complexity we can see and observe and have the intelligence to comtemplate or #2: Something, somewhere creatively and orderly and systematically formed what we see and observe and measure and gave us a source of intelligence to be able to even be self aware.
Am I wrong that all we see is either self creating or outside created? Is there a third option I am missing?
I eagerly await your tearing this apart so I am going to turn in and I will be back tomorrow.
July 16th, 2009 at 12:02 am
Had a few typos, sorry, one glaring one is “I do not buy nothing creating itself creating a leaf.” as being a true proof of the formation of a leaf.
July 16th, 2009 at 1:41 am
Once again, it looks to me like we have the following logical chain:
1) Everything must be created by something.
2) The universe is something.
3) By (1), the universe must be created by something.
4) That something is a god.
4a) God doesn’t require a creator.
I don’t see why making exception (4a) for God is any more satisfying than simply accepting that assumption (1) may be wrong. The axiom itself makes no sense to me, especially when the only answer to the problem seems to be positing an exception.
July 16th, 2009 at 4:39 am
[Apologies if the formatting is boned. The preview display is misbehaving and I'm not positive the HTML is going to render properly]
Always.
Let’s see…definition, analogy, definition, example, question, question, question, example…nope, there’s not a shred of anything resembling a proof in there. You’ve put forth ~800 words to simply repeat the same mistake that arensb pointed out to you above, Argumentum ad ignorantiam.
Then why couldn’t you stick to discussing evolution? Is it that you do not fully comprehend that evolution is a process and not a result of “start with X add some Y and you get Z plus some evolution”? If a scientist decides to study the evolution of a particular organism they do not have to prove the organism exists; it should be painfully obvious that the organism in question already exists. There is no need to provide a proof of the absolute Alpha nor the absolute Omega because it is not directly relevant.
All you have done is restated an opinion and attempted to promote said opinion to the level of factual knowledge by bolstering it with the retold myths and legends humans of thousands of years ago used to explain natural processes, tossing away tens of thousands of years of real scientific progress because it doesn’t agree with your preconceived notions of how things should work. Sorry, that’s not science.
July 16th, 2009 at 8:43 am
PCDR:
So. Argument from ignorance, argument from personal incredulity, and first cause. Forgive me for feeling underwhelmed.
So anything that’s complicated and not understood is a god? Like hurricanes, the magnetic field of the sun, quantum particles, mathematics, and the stock market?
That’s not Dawkins’s blind watchmaker: that’s Paley’s original watchmaker, the one Dawkins was playing off of in his title.
You may want to take this one in small steps. Start with “how do hydrogen and oxygen atoms create wetness?” and “how do carbon and silicon atoms create the ability to bend light?”, and work your way up from there.
July 17th, 2009 at 10:18 am
If you consider this a proof you have a serious needing in learning more about logic. This is more like your definition of a god and how that a creature cannot describe something above it’s intelligence. If you would have considered the more deeper meanings in your analogy you would come to the conclusion that if you are the dog and god is the master (interesting how those are mirror images) you would not be able to tell us (the other dogs) who your master was. Thus either you cannot tell us about your master and your analogy is invalid or you can and your god isn’t beyond understanding.
Taking this further, consider that in the bible your god is jealous, angry, vengeful, wrathful, loving, etc… etc… Yet for your god to “outside the realm of human understanding” he has many human emotions that are very much describable and understandable. The dog cannot tell other dogs that his master is jealous when the dogs pay attention to other masters or that he if the dog does not obey the master they will be punished. Which sounds to me like the gulf between dog and man is less than the gulf between man and god. Therefore, your god is not that complex or that much outside of the human realm at all.
July 17th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Dang, I just lost all my comments. Guess they were no good, right Fez.
I will summarize:
Troublesome Frog – I claimed to not be able to completely understand a god which is part of my definition of a god – bigger than me. You also claim to not be able to understand the creation of everything from nothing, yet it is fact to you. You call mine faith and yours science. I call them both faith. My faith is in a god who can do things I can not understand. Your faith is in a big pile of nothing that can do things you can’t understand. Neither one is science by the definition of science from any dictionary.
Fez – tell me what about evolution I do not understand that show how life begins or how Time, space, and matter are created from nothing that exists nowhere.
Arensb – I am surprised at your last comments. Did your morning coffee mess up your typing? I said a god would be more complex than a created being could understand. I did not say anything complex would be a god. I know that you know better than that. I wrote about Dawkins and the watch to make a point and because you had mentioned his book. Yes, I know that William Paley wrote about watches first. And finally how do physical properties have anything to do with abstract things. I can touch and measure wetness. I can see and measure light. Are you telling me you can see and touch and measure love and memories and thoughts and emotions. How is anger related to hydrogen? How is stupid related to carbon and oxygen?
menes777 – you are right, the gulf between my dog and me is greater than the gulf between me and MY God. MY God created me in his image. That is not to say slightly overweight, balding, with hairy arms, but with the abstract qualities of self awareness, and emotions, and abstract thoughts, and intelligence. My analogy with my dog is not perfect. No analogy is by definition. However the point is made that My dog knows he has a master and he recognizes me by what I do and have done. I recognize the existance of a god by what said god has done and does do.
July 17th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
So I got no third option. Either Everything we see created itself, or Everything we see was created by something outside. I know I am just a simple farm boy with an engineering degree, but I have never seen something create itself or seen any evidence or fact that it even could happen, so I am going with option B – a god. That is my faith leap. What is yours?
July 17th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
PCDR:
What little definition you gave of the word “god” was:
No human can understand all of math. Or keep track of all of the little forces that affect a hurricane or the magnetic fields of stars. Or figure out what the stock market will do tomorrow. Not in detail. So as far as I can tell, my examples fit your definition.
Yes. We do it all the time. You can look at people and tell whether they’re in love, or angry, or happy, etc. Not 100% of the time, of course, but certainly in many cases.
The same way that World of Warcraft is related to silicon. Brains are built out of carbon and hydrogen and oxygen and whatnot, and their behavior produces minds in the same way that electrons zipping around gold and gallium and silicon produce World of Warcraft.
I’ll go with magic universe-creating pixies under the command of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It’s more fun than your version, and has just as much evidence to support it.
July 17th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Awww look everyone, he’s sweet on me! I don’t care how many gifts you send peecee, you still don’t get a unicorn ride until you answer the question.
As for your comment itself:
You should have saved yourself the embarrassment and gone with your first hunch.
Peecee it’s clear you need the remedial elementary education. Find yourself a dictionary, look up the word “evolution” (no quotes), and transcribe or copy/paste for us here the definition provided therein, any of them, even the ones that do not discuss biological evolution at all, that relates to “how anything begins” or “how other things are created from nothing.” Can you do that for us sunshine? Hmmm?
July 17th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
PCDR:
I don’t recall claiming that the “creation of everything from nothing” is fact. My position is simply that the existence of the universe is no reason to suppose a god exists. There are alternate explanations, and I can’t think of any reason to prefer the existence of any god as preferable to them. As I’ll explain below, I can even think of a number of reasons why the incomplete models are still more satisfying.
Here’s the difference as I see it: One of them is at least marginally testable against the data we observe. Whether you like them or not, the hypotheses on the origins of space and time are designed to agree with observed reality and are discarded or refined when they do not.
Nobody has a “play by play” explanation of everything, but the process of building and trashing those models has given us infinitely more insights into the universe than simply pointing to magic. The revelations we have had about the age of the universe, its scale, and how the objects within it form and change over time are astounding. Even without solving the “what happened in the first 30 seconds” question, science has given us a lot.
Let me toss out some other options:
1) Everything was created, but it didn’t create itself and nothing on the outside created it.
2) Everything has always been here.
3) Going back far enough in time, there is no longer a meaningful concept of time, so the idea of a “before” and any sort of chain of causality is meaningless.
4) All of the above are true because logic and reason only happen to “work” in the immediately observable universe and, unfortunately, there’s no rhyme or reason to anything beyond a certain distance from us in space or time.
Those are just thoughts off the top of my head. I imagine philosophers and physicists could come up with dozens more. Trying to get at the ultimate origins of the universe by process of elimination does not seem likely to bear fruit.
July 18th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
You got me, I wrote this too fast and changed things at the end and didn’t have a chance to proof. I meant to say Greater not less than.
Self Awareness, emotions, abstract thoughts are intelligence are not traits that are unique to human beings. Many mammals display a wide range of emotions, from jealousy, to anger, to love, to fear, to sadness, to submission and dominance. Many studies have shown pets to display a wide range of emotions. Pack animals such as wolves, when observed, show that they have an extremely dynamic behavior that revolves around emotions. Abstract thoughts all depend on what your definition of that is. Dogs may not be able to count but they can tell the difference in size between two objects (or piles of things). My dogs have come to relate that if it looks fluffy and soft it’s a bed and it’s theirs to lay on. If we put something down that is hard and not soft, they avoid it. The only way they lay on it is if they have no other choice and/or it’s cool or warm. Yet that seems like a very abstract concept of hard and soft and they have somehow mastered it. Intelligence almost goes hand in hand with that. Animals can solve many problems without human intervention. They may not know what Pi means, but they definitely can escape cages, manipulate their masters and overcome problems that seem to be beyond their capability. Such as pets that wake their masters when there is a fire. Finally, how do you know that some mammals are not self aware? What is self awareness? If it is simply knowing what you are and what is around you, how do you know that a dog is not self aware??? They couldn’t speak to you in a way that you would understand, their vocal chords aren’t developed that way. They don’t have a language that we understand but they communicate with each other. They don’t have opposable thumbs so how could they write something to tell us? Just because they don’t go out in the dirt and scratch in out the words that they are dogs, doesn’t mean they do not know that.
Your dog is a domesticated animal that only knows humans as sources of companionship and support. If you start abusing them and leaving the food and water dish empty they are going to either turn on you or flee (if possible). Dogs don’t know humans as masters because they won the nobel prize or that they work as a doctors, lawyers and TV repairmen. They don’t even care that you own a sports boat or that you have Ferarri parked in the driveway. All they care about is that you feed them, water them, pet them and play with them. Their definition of master is not the same as yours. So you say the analogy falls short, but if you believe in a god because of what he has done, you surely have a limited outlook on life. There are many people that have done more for humanity than your god ever has, yet they are not worshipped as gods.
You say you recognize your god by what he has done and what he does? Can you turn over a rock and see “made by god”? Even if you assume that god created everything as perfectly as you say he did, made everything in balance. Why then does he rely on a cryptic, contradictory, incomplete book and imperfect humans to spread his word? If you removed all humans from the earth (and their creations) how would the only person around know that god existed? Even if they imagined a higher power, it would more likely be that mother earth was the god and not some uber powerful sky lord that needs tiny humans for his pleasure.
You say that both evolution and belief in your god require faith. Yet evolution does not require faith at all, if you don’t believe in evolution, you won’t burn in an eternal fire because you didn’t believe. The opposite also applies that you won’t spend an eternity in a heaven if you do believe. Evolution will happen with or without anyone believing in it and continues to happen when the individual is gone. Your religion forces you to believe or else you will be punished for it. It’s the way that religion puts a shackle on so many people to not only support itself, but make itself grow. The more educated humans become the less that shackle has control over them. At one point in history men believed that gods created thunder and lightning bolts, they made the ground shake, and they thought that volcanoes were from a fiery underworld. Now we can explain all of these things with science, logic and rational observations. What does your religion tell us??? That god did it. Well sorry I don’t buy that your god can create the earth in 6 days, but take almost 6000 years to defeat his arch rival, after slaughtering billions of humans along the way.
July 18th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
I wanted to mention one more thing about emotions. Emotions are very much part of the brain and they require a certain amount of nutrition to work. If a person receives brain damage of some kind they can become more violent and aggressive. They can become more sexual and/or less inhibited. Drinking alcohol pretty much exhibits that as it alters the way our brain functions. The Nazi’s were kind enough to provide a study that if you only give humans a certain calorie amount to sustain them, that they exhibit almost no emotions. Some serial killers have been said to be completely emotionless, yet they are human. What about limited emotional ranges? Some mentally challenged people are incapable of feeling love, yet are they not fully human?
What do Oxygen, Carbon and Hydrogen have to do with emotions? There are two words that will explain it all, testosterone and estrogen. Testosterone is made completely up of Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen, yet it’s one of the biggest differences between males and females. It also does so many different things in the body (of both sexes). Every steroid, pheromone, endorphin, and so on are made up of the elements, typically Carbon based. These things all affect how we grow, what we feel and how we react. And all of their molecular structures are easily definable among the periodic table of elements. So no hydrogen by itself has nothing to do with love or anger or jealousy, but combine that with carbon and oxygen in the correct sequence and quantity and you can make a romantic, jealous, caring man who loves, hates, gets sad, angry and happy.
August 26th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Troublesome Frog writes: “Here’s the difference as I see it: One of them is at least marginally testable against the data we observe. Whether you like them or not, the hypotheses on the origins of space and time are designed to agree with observed reality and are discarded or refined when they do not. “
I would ask for anything from the Big Bang that is “at least marginally testable” that does not conflict with observed science. Something besides “here it is, you can see and measure it, therefore it happened”
I would also ask for anything from abiogenisis that is “at least marginally testable” that also does not conflict with the observed science of probablity and possible conditions of the early earth.
August 26th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
PCDR:
How about the Urey-Miller experiment and the ones that followed[1]? How about the discovery of amino acids on a comet? How about the existence of ribozymes, and all that that implies about complex networks of chemical reactions?
But let’s back up a step. Let’s say that all mainstream ideas about how life might have begun are completely wrong. How would that affect what we do know about how evolution proceeded after that? We still have the fossils; we still win.
And what’s your beef with the Big Bang? Is it just that as long as scientists haven’t figured out every last detail about the origin of the universe, you can squeeze your god into one of the gaps?
For that matter, if the Big Bang, abiogenesis, and evolution were somehow disproved tomorrow, how would that provide any support for your brand of creationism?
Not that I expect you to start answering questions at this point. Or read books, or do any kind of research. All of this is largely rhetorical, for lurkers’ benefit.
[1] I put that in bold because creationists like to argue that the original experiment got the atmosphere wrong, but always forget about the follow-up experiments in which many different atmospheres and many power sources were tried, finding that amino acids form naturally under a variety of conditions.
August 26th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Did you try googling “big bang test” to see what comes out? It’s possible that NASA has a site that enumerates a handful of examples. Another possible direction might be this.
Let’s not confuse, “Has been tested several times and not been falsified” with, “Cannot, even in theory, be falsified through testing.”
1) Let’s try actually suggesting which abiogenesis hypothesis you are wanting to test.
2) You probably don’t want to get too far ahead of yourself on the probability thing. You will be asked to show your work.
August 26th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Troublesome Frog Says:
They haven’t thus far; what makes you think they’ll start now?
September 2nd, 2009 at 11:45 am
That is the beauty of a being a xian, you don’t have to show any work. Everything can be summed up with the following.
God said no, God said yes, God said wait, God did it, Satan’s working overtime and God works in mysterious ways.
September 2nd, 2009 at 7:24 pm
You know you will never agree, right?
This discussion can be likened with this: Imagine that there are only two people left in the world. One of them can only speak chinese, and the other can only speak arabic. No matter how much they talk with each other they will never understand each other. That is simply because they do not understand each others language. It is really the same with atheists vs christians or creationists vs evolutionists; the evolutionists leave out the possibility of the existence of God, so they can not understand the “language” of the Christians. On the other hand, the Christians leave out the possibility of the “non-existence” of God, so they can not understand the language of the atheists. Still, atheists try to prove their theories using their own language, and the same goes for the Christians.
September 2nd, 2009 at 10:12 pm
It is really the same with atheists vs christians or creationists vs evolutionists; the evolutionists leave out the possibility of the existence of God, so they can not understand the “language” of the Christians.
Complete bollocks, and considerably confused bollocks at that. “Evolutionists” do not “leave out the possibility of God” any more than any other scientific field does — no one tries to argue that God personally pushes the planets around their orbit, are the astronomers therefore also leaving out the possibility of God? Scientists simply have so far simply found no need to invoke divine action to explain the universe. Neither do we atheists leave out the possibility of God — many of us used to be Christians. Some of us know that religion better than the average current adherent. I understand Christian language just fine, thank you — I just came to realize that the entities it deals with are non-existent.
Nice try with the “You’re both equally wrong” fallacy; thank you for playing.
September 2nd, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Adam Weishaupt (if that’s really your name, and you’re not just an agent of the Illuminati):
You seem to be wrong on just about every point.
For starters, even using your analogy, I think you underestimate people’s ability to understand each other. A Chinese speaker and an Arabic speaker trapped on a desert island would, I’m sure, quickly work out some way of understanding each other.
This is manifestly untrue. Kenneth Miller, the author of Finding Darwin’s God is an evolutionary biologist, the author of one of the standard High School textbooks in biology, was a witness at the Dover trial for the pro-evolution side, and is also a devout Christian.
Francis Collins, Obama’s choice to head the NIH, used to be the head of the Human Genome Project, is by all accounts a very good scientist, has said that even if there weren’t a single fossil, the DNA evidence alone would be sufficient proof of evolution, is also an evangelical Christian, and quite a vocal one. In fact, his book The Language of God is subtitled A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.
Hell, even in the ID camp, Michael Behe accepts common descent of humans with all other living creatures. I know this because I he told me personally when I sent him email about it.
It isn’t hard to find evolutionary biologists who are also Christians. You need to look around a bit more.
As shown above, this is patently untrue. And even if you meant to write “atheist” instead of “evolutionist”, you’d still be wrong. Read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, who is both an evolutionary biologist and a vocal atheist. In this book, which is all about atheism, he spends several pages making it quite clear that he does not exclude the possibility of a god’s existence.
I can’t think of a single atheist, either among the famous published writers or my friends and acquaintances, who categorically excludes the possibility that there might be a god out there.
You should also google “deconversion story” and read some people’s accounts of how and why they left their particular religion. You’ll find that in many, probably most cases, deconversion doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a long process that takes years. Often people give up each bit of faith only after a struggle.
Furthermore, most atheists, at least in the US, were raised religious and grew out of it. Many remember being believers quite well, so it’s not a question of never having thought the way a believer does.
Again, this is manifestly untrue. Every church I’ve ever seen has programs to help backsliders, help people strengthen their faith, ceremonies to help those who have stumbled in the faith to rejoin the flock, and the like. What does it mean to have “weak faith”, if not to admit the possibility that the god they were taught about doesn’t exist? In fact, the very existence of such programs and ceremonies tells me that even believers find it hard to believe in gods; that they want to believe, but often can’t manage to do so. After all, plumbers don’t have retreats to relearn to believe in water. Bankers don’t go to seminars to strengthen their belief in money. Yet theists apparently require these sorts of thing.
Or perhaps you’re saying that you, personally, are unwilling to admit even the possibility that there might not be any gods. That just means you’re closed-minded. You may want to work on that. It’s not a virtue.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Hi, I’ve been quite busy lately but I have been trying to keep up with what is going on here. I hope you missed mocking me.
I think the biggest problem that people have with the theory of evolution is that it is described as a fact and even a law of nature when that is far from the truth. Case in point: I am a youth pastor, and I deal with kids being lied to in public schools. This angers me. I had a sophmore in high school report that her science teacher told the class “The theory of Evolution has been proven true, just like the theory of Gravity has been proven.” This is a flat out lie from many angles. First off, it is the Law of Gravity because the theory has been proven by science. It is universal, it is predictable, it is unchanging, and it can be used to predict how things will act. It can be used to send space probes to the far reaches of the solar system without crashing into things. It can be used to shoot missles. It can be used to design race cars and buildings. The THEORY of macro-evolution can not be observed in nature. It can not be used to predict things. It can not be repeated by testing. It is NOT a LAW so do not lie about it to support it.
Also, The theory of macro evolution has a history of lies and faked fossils and unproven/unrepeated lab tests and false drawings and changing theories and disagreeing theories. Since it is not proven, do not present it as such, and if it is so obvious, stop fibbing about facts.
http://www.scienceagainstevolution.org/v12i6f.htm Has a great list of problems. Not my list.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Nope. Why don’t you come back when you know what scientific laws and theories are? If you had a clue, you wouldn’t think that a law can become a theory (though someone can take a bunch of laws and come up with a theory based on them).
Also, if you’re going to recommend that site, why don’t you go learn the difference between chance and natural selection? For that matter, why don’t you come up with a few instances when both natural and supernatural explanations were given for some phenomenon, and the supernatural explanation turned out to be correct?
Oh, I know why: because that would require you to learn stuff, and learning is socialism.
September 8th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
pcdr says:
And no doubt, somewhere in the world, there’s a group parents and teachers who are angry because they have to keep unbrainwashing the children because their youth pastor keeps lying to them. Not that that bothers you in the least.
You are a textbook example of someone least suited to have responsibility for children. You’ve bought so completely into your own bullshit you’ve convinced yourself that you, and only you, know “the Truth” and everyone else must be wrong.
September 8th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Welcome to the modern GOP!
September 8th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
arensb said:
Here’s your sheet; check your brain at the door.
September 8th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
PCDR,
I can’t help but notice that rather than engage the (numerous) lines of discussion you’ve opened up already, you’ve decided to start a completely new one. What are the odds that Lucy will let Charlie kick the football this time around if somebody actually takes the time to respond substantively? Will you acknowledge those efforts, or will you disappear, reappear, and start up on something else as if nothing ever happened again?
September 8th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Troublesome Frog:
What do you mean, “if”? I gave him two links to tehPedia. If that isn’t more substance than he deserves, I don’t know what is.
That’s the trouble with creationists (and antivaxxers, and conspiracy theorists, etc.): they don’t see arguments as tools for discerning truth from fiction, but rather as weapons in a battle of ideas. They don’t care what the truth is, because they’ve already decided which answer they like. And so, when arguing with an infidel, all they see is “well, this apologetic didn’t work, so I’ll try the next one and see if it works any better. And the next, and the next, again and again“.
They also don’t discard bad arguments, because something that doesn’t work on one person might still work on the next.
September 9th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Substitute theory of macro evolution with creationism and you would be spot on.
History of Lies? Check – With Kent Hovind being the biggest liar of all.
Faked Fossiles? Check – Again with Kenth Hovind presenting replicas of fossils that he made based on descriptions, not actual bones. Yet he’s presented them as fact. Not to mention him presenting artifacts as fossils that aren’t really fossils.
Unproven/unrepeated lab? – What lab tests?
False drawings? – Again Kent Hovind is a guilty here as well.
Changing theories? – Versus having a theory that never changes regardless of the evidence against it? Change is good not bad. Creationism is charging ahead saying the same thing over and over regardless of the evidence for or against it.
Disagreeing theories? – You mean like all of those different branches of Christianity??? That can’t seem to agree on anything?
How about instead of making a blanket statement about fibbed facts, why don’t you borrow a textbook, present the fact you think is fibbed, and then prove how and why it is fibbed (citing your sources)?
September 14th, 2009 at 9:27 am
Lies by Evolution:
Piltdown man
Nebraska Man
Java Man
Orce Man
Neanderthal
Lucy
Ernst Haeckel
Archaeoraptor Liaoningensis
Ota Benga
Brontosaurus
The Peppered Moths
Computer Simulations of Eye Evolution
September 14th, 2009 at 10:29 am
PCDR:
I’ll see your list and raise you a Kent Hovind.
Also, to quote menes777, above:
September 14th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
I take it the gift shop at AiG’s Creation Museum was fresh out of commas today?
September 14th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
I didn’t know it was possible to perform the Gish Gallop in slow motion. That, at least, may be a breakthrough.
September 14th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
So if science is the truth, and the history and present (see the lemur/monkey/human at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,520632,00.html?sPage=fnc/scitech/evolution) of evolution “science” is full of lies. To me that says evolution is not yet science. Come with facts.
Yet rather than defend evolution by condemning the lies and falsehoods, you instead attack the next guy. Kind of sounds like my 5 year old. “Ya I hit him, but he hit me first.” I thought evolution was educated not first grade.
Do you deny that any of the above list is lies?
As for the formatting, I had a list with line returns that was reformatted with spaces. But again, rather than deal with the facts of the lies, you choose to mock.
September 14th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
The pattern that’s emerging that you’re failing to notice is this: People are trying to nail you down on *one* claim and then explore that claim to its logical conclusion. You are throwing out claim after claim, abandoning each one as soon as somebody responds and the level of detail increases.
That’s the difference between the two ways of looking at the world. With science, you keep digging and challenging and testing until you’re relatively sure where you stand. With rhetoric, you simply throw out nice-sounding claims and then silently let them drop when it’s clear that they’re not winning the argument. Is your goal to actually get into the science, or is it simply to throw out unsupported claim after unsupported claim and then declare victory when people decide to stop dealing with you?
In the interest of deepening rather than broadening the discussion, I’d be interested in hearing what “lies” are involved in the computer simulations of eye evolution. If you’re sure of your pieces of evidence, you shouldn’t mind having it judged on quality rather as well as quantity. I think we should start with:
1) Which simulation(s)?
2) How did they work?
3) What was wrong with them?
4) What causes you to conclude that they’re “lies” rather than flawed experiments?
September 14th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Eamon Knight:
Actually, I’m not going to give picder too much crap over that: I used to have a plugin that allows you to write in a wiki-like syntax, and converts that to HTML. I’m pretty sure it applied to the comments as well. I recently turned it off because it was more pain than it was worth.
At any rate, the list that picky dear posted was originally formatted as a list, with one
item per
line. I think that looks normal in the
preview, but
gets converted to a block of text when it’s posted.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Ah, if it’s a posting artefact then I withdraw the snark and apologize.
However, even properly punctuated, the list is non-responsive to the question asked — a context-free list of words, that we’re all supposed to guess what it means and then refute it. Or I guess PCDR wins the argument, in his own mind. Some of the items (eg. Piltdown) I recognize from long experience — and recall responses at the t.o archive. But I have no idea what it means to claim the “brontosaurus” is a lie — something to do with renaming it to Apatosaurus? (and I vaguely recall some mix-up about the skull of one specimen).
It reflects a certain obtuseness of many creationists from my t.o years, that they don’t seem to know what an argument even *looks like*.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
I’ve undone the thing that I did, since it was affecting comments. Now both picky dear’s and Troublesome Frog’s lists look more listy.
Eamon Knight:
I am so stealing this.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Oh, and for anyone who’s still reading: this thread is becoming unmanageable. As soon as it hits 300 comments, I plan to close it, and open an overflow thread.
September 16th, 2009 at 8:56 am
PCDR:
Can you provide us with any information about this “Computer Simulations of Eye Evolution” being a lie? I attempted to use the oracle that is Google to find information but I keep coming up with everything about a simulation but nothing about a lie. Can you provide any information (link, article, etc…) that shows the simulation is a lie. You know something with substance showing how and why the simulation was a lie? Not just a claim that it was a lie?
You aren’t being attacked for what you believe or who you are. You are being attacked because every time someone calls you to the mat on a particular topic you walk away and ignore them just like the other gentlemen and ladies on this thread have pointed out. If you honestly want to get through to a more intelligent branch of people you are going to have to stop topic hopping and give some real meat on one thing. I challenge you as an individual thinking human to stop taking someone ones word for it and do your own discovering. Do what Socrates said to do, forget everything you know and start over new. You might be surprised at what you discover that you didn’t know but thought you knew.
September 16th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
I third the request for PCDR to outline exactly what he thinks is wrong — so wrong, it deserves the label of “lie” — with “Computer Simulations of Eye Evolution”. He can start with the Anuran Nuisance’s list of questions above, and I’ll even throw in the names “Nilsson” and “Pelger” — the authors of one moderately well-known paper on the subject.
I further suggest that everyone hold his feet to the fire on this one. PCDR doesn’t get to change the subject, or toss in any other issues, until he has argued this one through, or admitted he was just making crap up.
PCDR: Put up or shut up.
September 16th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Prediction: As of this post, PCDR is gone.
September 17th, 2009 at 9:17 am
Troublesome Frog said:
I predict he’ll be back in some weeks or months continuing on as before and as clue-resistant as ever.
September 17th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Either that or he will show back up for one last hurrah. Where he will throw his hands in the air, say we are being willfully ignorant and that we are headed straight for hell. Maybe mixed in with some “I know what I believe is true” style comments.
September 17th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Wow. With you guys on the job, I feel like there’s no need for me to say anything. Thanks!
September 21st, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Richard Dawkins, well-known evolutionist, claimed in his book River Out of Eden that computer models exist that can simulate or recreate the evolution of the eye.
However, the senior author of the study on which Dawkins based his claim, Dan E. Nilsson, has explicitly rejected the idea that his laboratory has ever produced a computer simulation of the eye’s development.
September 21st, 2009 at 5:30 pm
PCDR:
As an academic, Dawkins almost certainly included references to support his assertion. Could you please give us those references? They should be in the footnotes, endnotes, or bibliography. If the paper’s on the web, could you include a link to that as well?
Do you have a reference for this, or are we expected to take your word for it?
September 21st, 2009 at 5:44 pm
PCDR Says:
Ok, let’s get the checklist out:
Troublesome Frog said:
PCDR: Richard Dawkins, well-known evolutionist, claimed in his book River Out of Eden that computer models exist that can simulate or recreate the evolution of the eye.
Score: I’ll give you a half-point. You were relevant, but you have not identified the models themselves, you appear to just be copy-pasta using someone else’s words.
PCDR: [blank stare]
PCDR: [blank stare]
PCDR: However, the senior author of the study on which Dawkins based his claim, Dan E. Nilsson, has explicitly rejected the idea that his laboratory has ever produced a computer simulation of the eye’s development.
Score: I’ll allow the point. You answered the question with, “because someone else said they were wrong” but that is a syntactically correct answer.
Overall rating: Poor showing. Shows no original thought, no comprehension of the subject matter, responses could have just as easily been assembled via keyword search and a little Perl.
September 21st, 2009 at 6:25 pm
As I suspected.
From Godless: The Church of Liberalism By Ann Coulter. Almost verbatim. Without attribution.
Minus one point for academic dishonesty.
September 21st, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Fez:
I see a lot of wiggle room in there for Coulter to be able to claim that she wasn’t lying. For starters, there’s no such thing as the eye, since they’ve evolved independently at least 20 times. For another, if this is the paper I’m thinking of, it’s plausible for the authors (there’s more than one author, and usually credit is given to all of them, but I note that PCDR has yet to mention Nilsson’s collaborator(s)) saying that the paper isn’t about how eyes evolved, but simply how long it might take.
So now all that PCDR has to do is to follow the chain of references from Godless to TPIGtS to the original quotation by Nilsson and post it here in full. Oh, and don’t forget to look up the original paper as well. Then we’ll all be able to see who’s right and who’s pulling stuff out of who’s ass.
September 21st, 2009 at 7:55 pm
PCDR,
A few questions, here. Have you read River Out of Eden? Have you looked at the study that it references? I did a few minutes if digging based on the information Fez pulled up and found this:
The larger response was Dan Nilsson generally smacking Berlinski around for errors in his assessment of Nillson’s paper. I’m actually a little bit surprised to find this on Discovery’s site, given their participants’ nasty tendency toward making criticism disappear. Anyway, it sounds to me like in this case, the problem is the difference between “computer simulation” and “algorithm that could be run as a simulation but whose performance was analyzed mathematically instead.”
As much as I hate doing other peoples’ homework for them, it looks like the paper in question is referenced here. I don’t see a full text version anywhere, so I can’t comment on the contents. It does, however, look like this discussion is not a new one. It also looks like “explicitly rejected” is a bit strong, at least in its connotation.
September 21st, 2009 at 8:09 pm
So why is it that Fez, Troublesome Frog, and others appear to have no trouble providing links to the documents that back up their claims, but creationists seem incapable of doing so?
I also note that Coulter’s “No one has the faintest idea how to make one”, above, is directly contradicted by Troublesome Frog’s quotation of Nilsson: he isn’t saying he wouldn’t know how to write a simulation, he’s saying he hasn’t bothered because it would be trivial.
September 28th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
PCDR can only quote mine to make to any kind of backups to his arguments. If he were to include links to his references it would become quite apparent he stopped reading (and thinking) after he found what supported his views. Then took that piece out and tried to pass it off as a point of rebuttal. That’s even given him the credit of actually getting the quote himself instead of copying and pasting it from some creationist book (website, blog, etc…) and passing it off as his own.
October 14th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
I should know better, but is that all the great PCDR has to offer? Not even a weak rebuttal to anything he has attempted to argue? I almost expected something along the lines of “well you wouldn’t understand since you don’t believe in god” or maybe a “there’s point in continuing, you always obviously hate god”. It’s sad that people will tow the line of dogma so long and so thoughtlessly that they ignore the truth around them.
October 14th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
I should know better, but is that all the great PCDR has to offer? Not even a weak rebuttal to anything he has attempted to argue? I almost expected something along the lines of “well you wouldn’t understand since you don’t believe in god” or maybe a “there’s no point in continuing, you all obviously hate god”. It’s sad that people will tow the line of dogma so long and so thoughtlessly that they ignore the truth around them.