Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2004 11:03 am
What about corndogs?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Page 4 of 6
Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2004 11:24 am
Divergents of a species is well known. One only needs look at marsupials. In Australia there are many forms of marsupials that came from the same parent stock eons ago. In North America we have the opossum. A opossum cannot breed with a kangaroo. Trouble is the divergence to where two branches of a species may no longer interbreed takes more than a few thousands of years. Which in of itself shows the span of evolution stretches further back than 10,000 years.
Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2004 11:35 am
How do you know they came from the same parent stock? How do you know that they simply didn't have the same creator? How do you account for the fact that there is no way a cell could even come into existence through chemical processes in the first place? How do you account for the lack of intermediate links in the fossil record? How do you account for the fact, in order for this to be true, for the first cell to have evolved eventually into a super-marsupial with that rich of a gene pool, genetic information either had to be created (which has never been proven to occur) or the original cell had to have the genetic information for the entire world as we know it?
P.S. your classifications are flawed. Kangaroos and opossums are grouped into different families of the classification scheme. Animals of different families can be as different as night and day, and CERTAINLY don't mate together very often.
There are between 260 and 280 different classifications of marsupials, and 16 different families. Species can often interbreed, but families... no.
P.S. your classifications are flawed. Kangaroos and opossums are grouped into different families of the classification scheme. Animals of different families can be as different as night and day, and CERTAINLY don't mate together very often.
There are between 260 and 280 different classifications of marsupials, and 16 different families. Species can often interbreed, but families... no.
Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2004 7:07 pm
Hehe... brainwashed, huh? Aww, that's all right, no offense taken. Believe me, I've been called much worse in these sorts of debates! 
And I can see why you might think that. (For what it's worth, though, the vast majority of what I write is original to me. Nobody's feeding me ideas, I promise you. I study. And many of my subsequent opinions are completely foreign to the modern church!)
Am I really brainwashed? Honestly, it's something I wonder about myself. I am quite familiar with the human ability to explain everything from certain assumptions--especially the ability of smart people to do so. I know you can make sense of the world as a Christian, but I also know you can make sense of the sense of the world as an atheist, as a Muslim, or as a Buddhist. I have observed creation science as a curious outsider, and one of the things that has struck me is how able people are to make sense of the world, given inviolable initial assumptions--even assumptions that are laughable to others!
Dostoyevski had a wonderful take on that. He wrote that miracles don't generate faith--rather, faith generates miracles. I see miracles all around me because I believe in God. The atheist cannot see miracles because he assumes they don't exist--at best, he sees things he cannot explain, but he waits forever for the explanation. (I think that's incomplete--more like, faith or lack thereof affects how many miracles you see and what magnitude they have to be before you accept they are miracles. But the sentiment is correct--Christians see miracles and atheists don't, and a lot of it has to do, not with what they see, but what they believe.)
Have I brainwashed myself to see God everywhere? It's possible. But then that's a sword that cuts both ways, isn't it? Have atheists brainwashed themselves into not seeing God even though he's there?
I suppose similar things have happened to me before. For some time during my marriage, I somehow gained a belief that my husband didn't really care about me. I could explain the things he was doing in terms of selfish motives, desire to please me, and so forth--and in so doing, explain away anything that looked like love. This despite the fact that my husband is one of the most energetically, constantly loving people I've ever met! But I had somehow brainwashed myself not to see it--and when that came to light, I chose to re-examine what my husband did. And I saw love. Everywhere.
The mind is like that, I guess. And dealing with that is something I do. How? By keeping alternate explanations in mind, as well as having chosen one I believe. I know the alternate ideas. I know the rationalistic explanation--reducing the Christian experience to psychology, reducing the Bible to cultural myth. I have even had people try to tell me what particular mental diseases I suffer from in prayer, I have read the scholars' analyses of the Bible emerging as cultural myth. Those are alternate explanations, and the best I can do is to keep those in mind, and constantly test how well they square with experience.
That there exists an alternate explanation isn't good enough for me--you could brainwash yourself into any of a thousand alternate explanations. You could quite consistently be a skeptic, or a nihilist, but that is evident insanity in my eyes. You could quite consistently be a conspiracy theorist and explain everything given enough time and effort. That isn't the point. I think alternate explanations have to be better explanations.
The existence of God can't be proven to everyone with every worldview. Of course it can't. Shoot, the existence of my chair can't be proven to everyone with every worldview. And anyway, from my own studies, it seems to me that God has better things to be doing than proving himself to skeptics--so there you go.
Do I make a mess out of the evidence? Am I brainwashed? Maybe. The constant possibility is something I live with, and laugh at my own futility to deal with. And then I move on and live by faith--that seems to me the only rational thing to do.
And I can see why you might think that. (For what it's worth, though, the vast majority of what I write is original to me. Nobody's feeding me ideas, I promise you. I study. And many of my subsequent opinions are completely foreign to the modern church!) Am I really brainwashed? Honestly, it's something I wonder about myself. I am quite familiar with the human ability to explain everything from certain assumptions--especially the ability of smart people to do so. I know you can make sense of the world as a Christian, but I also know you can make sense of the sense of the world as an atheist, as a Muslim, or as a Buddhist. I have observed creation science as a curious outsider, and one of the things that has struck me is how able people are to make sense of the world, given inviolable initial assumptions--even assumptions that are laughable to others!
Dostoyevski had a wonderful take on that. He wrote that miracles don't generate faith--rather, faith generates miracles. I see miracles all around me because I believe in God. The atheist cannot see miracles because he assumes they don't exist--at best, he sees things he cannot explain, but he waits forever for the explanation. (I think that's incomplete--more like, faith or lack thereof affects how many miracles you see and what magnitude they have to be before you accept they are miracles. But the sentiment is correct--Christians see miracles and atheists don't, and a lot of it has to do, not with what they see, but what they believe.)
Have I brainwashed myself to see God everywhere? It's possible. But then that's a sword that cuts both ways, isn't it? Have atheists brainwashed themselves into not seeing God even though he's there?
I suppose similar things have happened to me before. For some time during my marriage, I somehow gained a belief that my husband didn't really care about me. I could explain the things he was doing in terms of selfish motives, desire to please me, and so forth--and in so doing, explain away anything that looked like love. This despite the fact that my husband is one of the most energetically, constantly loving people I've ever met! But I had somehow brainwashed myself not to see it--and when that came to light, I chose to re-examine what my husband did. And I saw love. Everywhere.
The mind is like that, I guess. And dealing with that is something I do. How? By keeping alternate explanations in mind, as well as having chosen one I believe. I know the alternate ideas. I know the rationalistic explanation--reducing the Christian experience to psychology, reducing the Bible to cultural myth. I have even had people try to tell me what particular mental diseases I suffer from in prayer, I have read the scholars' analyses of the Bible emerging as cultural myth. Those are alternate explanations, and the best I can do is to keep those in mind, and constantly test how well they square with experience.
That there exists an alternate explanation isn't good enough for me--you could brainwash yourself into any of a thousand alternate explanations. You could quite consistently be a skeptic, or a nihilist, but that is evident insanity in my eyes. You could quite consistently be a conspiracy theorist and explain everything given enough time and effort. That isn't the point. I think alternate explanations have to be better explanations.
The existence of God can't be proven to everyone with every worldview. Of course it can't. Shoot, the existence of my chair can't be proven to everyone with every worldview. And anyway, from my own studies, it seems to me that God has better things to be doing than proving himself to skeptics--so there you go.
Do I make a mess out of the evidence? Am I brainwashed? Maybe. The constant possibility is something I live with, and laugh at my own futility to deal with. And then I move on and live by faith--that seems to me the only rational thing to do.
Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2004 7:36 pm
Stryker, despite your use of the term, you haven't "disproved" anything. What you've done is regurgitate creationist propaganda that appears to have merit to anyone with a merely surficial understanding of science.
Also, while I do believe that you aren't a typical 15-year old idiot, your arguments are those of a typical 15-year old idiot. Note that half the DBB got straight A's in school, took all the AP and honors classes, and score 95% or better in standardized tests. Just ask them. Also, everyone here has an IQ between 140 and 210, just ask them or refer to one of the many IQ threads.
I can't even begin to debate you because it's apparent that your understanding of even the most basic scientific concepts approaches nil. But please don't take my unwillingness to try to educate the uneducatable as a win for you. A serious reply addressing even one of your misconceptions would require so much background information that the entire undertaking is too burdensome to contemplate. And anyway, anything I had to say would just cause you to stick your fingers in your ears.
I'm aware that this is essentially a flame, and that you requested not to be flamed. However, I can't apologize because you were trolling for it. Good day.
- G
Also, while I do believe that you aren't a typical 15-year old idiot, your arguments are those of a typical 15-year old idiot. Note that half the DBB got straight A's in school, took all the AP and honors classes, and score 95% or better in standardized tests. Just ask them. Also, everyone here has an IQ between 140 and 210, just ask them or refer to one of the many IQ threads.
I can't even begin to debate you because it's apparent that your understanding of even the most basic scientific concepts approaches nil. But please don't take my unwillingness to try to educate the uneducatable as a win for you. A serious reply addressing even one of your misconceptions would require so much background information that the entire undertaking is too burdensome to contemplate. And anyway, anything I had to say would just cause you to stick your fingers in your ears.
I'm aware that this is essentially a flame, and that you requested not to be flamed. However, I can't apologize because you were trolling for it. Good day.
- G
Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2004 8:03 pm
Sryker:
Good grief man have you no concept of basic geology! I have personaly found the fossils of ocean dwelling animals (bivalves) at 6,000 feet of altitude. How did they get there? The earth has undergone enormous change in it's existence continents have been torn apart and crushed together. Mountain ranges are growing in hight every year! They are measurably higher and are measured every year by very sophticated insruments of incredible accuracy. Erosion fights against this upheaval.
Do yourself a favour and learn somthing. Read Drakona's link. Read somthing from someone without a religeous agenda.
Who am I kidding Gengis is probably right and your fingers are likely firmly in your ears right now.
There would be much, MUCH more erosion than is seen today. Any place with flowing water would look a lot like the grand canyon in depth. Erosion is slow, but in 4.6 billion years, it could wreak some serious havoc.
Good grief man have you no concept of basic geology! I have personaly found the fossils of ocean dwelling animals (bivalves) at 6,000 feet of altitude. How did they get there? The earth has undergone enormous change in it's existence continents have been torn apart and crushed together. Mountain ranges are growing in hight every year! They are measurably higher and are measured every year by very sophticated insruments of incredible accuracy. Erosion fights against this upheaval.
Do yourself a favour and learn somthing. Read Drakona's link. Read somthing from someone without a religeous agenda.
Who am I kidding Gengis is probably right and your fingers are likely firmly in your ears right now.
Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2004 8:36 pm
Not here.Is there a god?
Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2004 8:45 pm
Drakona,Drakona wrote:Hehe... brainwashed, huh? Aww, that's all right, no offense taken. Believe me, I've been called much worse in these sorts of debates!
Thanks for not being mad at me.
I like what you've said, even though I don't believe a word of it. You have made a choice to accept God by believing what you were taught, what you see in the world, and most important by what you feel inside. I'm happy for you.
However, I see the world much differently. To me, If there was a god, it would be a Walt Disney kind of world where familys live happily ever after. It could have been like that if god chose it to be, but for whatever twisted reason involving broken rules, he didn't.
After crying and praying to god every day for a year ( I believed then) to bring back my mother who left me at age 10, I began to form my own choice. I wondered what kind of world it would be with and without a god and quickly found my answer.
Then, that little 5yr old girl I mentioned before, who said her prayers every night only to get stolen, dragged into the woods, raped, and murdered. What about the kids with cancer in childrens hospitals....why should there even be childrens hospitals. Why can't religious instructors answer my questions. Too many questions...no GOOD answers.
Either way, I'm forever dead. If there is no god, then I'm dead. If there is a god, I will never forgive him for making the world what it is today. I hate him for LETTING it happen. Wars, killings, you name it.
Thanks for letting me vent here, because I can't do it anywhere else. If my Dad found out how I truly felt, he would rake my face with a barbed wire board with nails in it until I bled to death, but in reality, it would break his heart and I love him way too much to do that.
Your friend
Bettina
Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2004 9:33 pm
Ford Prefect wrote:Sryker:There would be much, MUCH more erosion than is seen today. Any place with flowing water would look a lot like the grand canyon in depth. Erosion is slow, but in 4.6 billion years, it could wreak some serious havoc.
Good grief man have you no concept of basic geology! I have personaly found the fossils of ocean dwelling animals (bivalves) at 6,000 feet of altitude. How did they get there? The earth has undergone enormous change in it's existence continents have been torn apart and crushed together. Mountain ranges are growing in hight every year! They are measurably higher and are measured every year by very sophticated insruments of incredible accuracy. Erosion fights against this upheaval.
Do yourself a favour and learn somthing. Read Drakona's link. Read somthing from someone without a religeous agenda.
Who am I kidding Gengis is probably right and your fingers are likely firmly in your ears right now.
Show me evidence. Show me facts. Show me reasoning. Show me ANYTHING. If you aren't going to present actual evidence so we can have a real debate, I might as well be talking to a box of rocks. Which, I have a feeling, might be the case anyways.Ghengis wrote:Stryker, despite your use of the term, you haven't "disproved" anything. What you've done is regurgitate creationist propaganda that appears to have merit to anyone with a merely surficial understanding of science.
Also, while I do believe that you aren't a typical 15-year old idiot, your arguments are those of a typical 15-year old idiot. Note that half the DBB got straight A's in school, took all the AP and honors classes, and score 95% or better in standardized tests. Just ask them. Also, everyone here has an IQ between 140 and 210, just ask them or refer to one of the many IQ threads.
I can't even begin to debate you because it's apparent that your understanding of even the most basic scientific concepts approaches nil. But please don't take my unwillingness to try to educate the uneducatable as a win for you. A serious reply addressing even one of your misconceptions would require so much background information that the entire undertaking is too burdensome to contemplate. And anyway, anything I had to say would just cause you to stick your fingers in your ears.
I'm aware that this is essentially a flame, and that you requested not to be flamed. However, I can't apologize because you were trolling for it. Good day.
- G
Ford, what the heck are you trying to say? The flood is perfect evidence that fossils could be created on mountaintops. Besides that, when have I ever said that the earth has not undergone radical change in the last 6000-8000 years? I have specifically argued that the earth HAS changed radically in the last several thousand years. Attacking straw men isn't going to get you anywhere. I know erosion is combating the force of tectonic shifting, which causes mountains to become more pronounced. I probably shouldn't have said "any" in there. That's too absolute of a word for that situation. My point is, one would think that the entire earth would look a heck of a lot older. These insanely active tectonic plates, the volcanic activity, all of this stuff would not be going on were the earth not young anyway.
You guys say it is impossible to educate me because I am uneducatable. I think you just don't want to because you'd actually have to look something up.
I've refuted a lot of evolution's major claims. I've presented the way I think it occurred. I've done everything short of brainwash you to try and convince you. I think it's already too late for the brainwashing part. Public schools got to brainwash your minds first.
I haven't seen more than a couple points of evolution proved to me as valid. The antropic principle is one idea. But it still doesn't have the capability of explaining our earth today.
In short, I'm challenging anyone on this board, as an official challenge, to write something up to refute what I'm saying. Heck, you can combine forces and write it, I don't care. My point is that you'll find it a lot harder than you think. The actual data has been shown to support a God. I challenge anyone, ANYONE on these boards, to go through my points, sit down, show definitively that evolution can be plausible, write it out, and without simply pointing a finger and saying "that's wrong because that's not what I was "taught" in high school", prove your point definitively.
Of course, you're just going to stick your fingers in your ears, insult my education some more, perhaps yell "YOU'RE DUMB" at me a few more times, and walk off without even attempting to do what I'm challenging you to do. You're about as hard to figure out as I am.
Why do I even bother?
Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 12:34 am
I don't suppose it would help much if I said that it isn't a Walt Disney kind of world, but rather a Tolkein kind of world? It isn't sugar, spice, and everything nice, with a few clearly evil, easily defeated villians... but rather a grand drama full of deep evil, sorrow, suffering, heroes, compassion, and glory. It isn't cartoony sugary good, it's rich life and its attached profound goodness. Would it help if I said that?bet51987 wrote:To me, If there was a god, it would be a Walt Disney kind of world where familys live happily ever after.
Heh, yeah, I didn't think it would. That's the nature of faith for you. I had to try, you know.
Take care.Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 3:07 am
Stryker:
I'm a fellow Christian with you. I am a devoted follower of Jesus, a member of an evangelical church (Baptist to be specific), and I hold to the inerrancy of the Bible. I study the Bible a lot, and in fact I'm even teaching a Sunday School class on Biblical Interpretation at my Church, starting this Sunday. Given all that, you can know that I don't have any reason to promote any sort of atheistic agenda, and that I'm no n00b studying the Bible and not going to make silly mistakes or read things out of context. I love God, I have studied the Bible a lot, and I've studied creation/evolution a lot. Bear that in mind when you read what I say.
Let me make clear at the start that the age of the earth is a controversy within the church--that there are Bible-believing folks on both sides of the issue. I can talk more about the interpretation of Genesis 1 if you want, but I suspect you've heard the arguments. It sounds like your objections are scientific, not Biblical, and that's commendable. I just wanted to make sure that was clear: not everyone agrees that the Bible spells out the age of the earth, and this isn't some people "doubting scripture" or "being unfaithful" to it. It's honest difference of opinion on what it says. I don't think we can say for sure that the Bible says a lot, technically speaking about origins--other than that God ultimately is the one who made us.
Just to give the run-down, though, there are those who think Genesis 1 gives a literal account of creation as it happened, in which each day is 24 hours and each creation is miraculous--creation out of nothing. There are those who think the days in Genesis 1 are symbolic of long ages, and the chapter gives the details of creation over six ages--ages stretching many millions of years each. There are those who think that between 1:1 and 1:2 is a whole other failed creation, and Genesis 1 gives an account of the rebuilding and recreation, not the original creation. And then there are those who think the entire chapter is poetic and metaphorical, a creative framework, not a literal history. There are a number of other views, too--one of the most remarkable I've run into is that of a Biblical scholar who believes that Genesis 1 is an account of the creation of the garden of Eden, not the whole world, and he thinks a wider reading is unscientific, illogical and furthermore bad interpretation!
All of the people who hold these views believe that God is the creator. All of these people believe the Bible is true. They just disagree on how to interpret it. (Again, I doubt this is news to you... I just wanted to get it out there.)
So... on to the science.
(Let me preface this by saying that I am not a scientist, nor do I have much training in hard science. Though I study things as a hobby, others with more expertise shouldn't feel shy about correcting me if I get my facts wrong here.)
Now, origins is a really big topic. Asking someone on an internet forum to prove things to you is asking too much--it's like asking me to give you 6 years' worth of math education in a single post. It's not going to happen. Ultimately, you're responsible for your own learning--you have to be the one who reads the books, does the research, and learns things. All I can do is give you some resources, critique your arguments, and maybe push you in the right direction. So, just so you know: this stuff isn't proof. It's a push. But it might shake you up a bit.
=======================
Age of the earth:
There are two things to watch out for in dating arguments--two general tricks to be careful of.
One is leaving out half of the equation. For example, I saw an argument looking at the age of the earth based on how much of a certain mineral there was in the oceans. They took how much of that mineral was in the ocean now, and divided it by the rate it was coming into the ocean (via rivers and stuff), and got that it had been happining for about 11,000 years. The problem with this argument was that they didn't account for how fast the stuff was going out of the ocean. As a matter of fact, the stuff was going in and out at pretty much the same rate, due to different natural processes--so you obviously couldn't use the amount in the ocean to date anything. The whole argument was flawed.
That's something to consider with respect to the argument you made about rocks (or mountains) being pointy and sharp. Erosion wears down rocks and makes them smooth, especially if it's given a lot of time in which to do it. So we know the pointy rocks should be disappearing. But that's only half of the equation. Is there anything that makes new pointy rocks? Sure. Old ones getting broken. Geological forces causing big layers of rock to buckle, shift, and break. (I don't know what else--I pulled those out of thin air. I'm no geologist.) How much do each of those things happen? Is it possible that the earth is making pointy rocks much faster than it's wearing them smooth? Or should it be wearing them smooth much faster than it's making new pointy ones? If you don't know, then you need to do more research about it in order to be fair--because for all you know, the earth could have just the right number of pointy rocks for being very old.
The other thing to watch out for is the assumption that processes have been constant. There was a guy on the DBB about a year ago I think that made an argument about the size of the sun. He quoted an article that said the sun's radius had decreased in size by 0.5% in the last 400 years (or something like that), and concluded that if the old earth view was correct, the sun must have originally been the size of the whole solar system! Stop and think about this for a moment though. Is there any reason to suppose that the sun's radius has to change at a constant rate through all of history? Maybe it grows and shrinks. Or maybe it's the volume that changes, not the radius. Or maybe it grows logarithmically, or exponentially, or some other way than at a constant rate. There are lots of possibilities. Whenever someone wants to use something constant to date by, ask yourself--is there a good reason why that thing should have remained constant through the years?
This is a problem with the argument you gave about the grand canyon. It has a river in it, and if that river had been there for 4.6 billion years, it might have made a much bigger canyon. But is there any reason to suppose that process must have been constant? Is it likely, given the old earth view, that the river was there for the entire 4.6 billion years? Of course not. Rivers change course. The world's been through a lot of climate changes--there might not have even been such a river for a lot of its history. Would the size and speed of the river have to stay constant over those 4.6 billion years? How about the hardness of the rock it's cutting through? Of course not. It's all just guesswork.
In general, these are good questions to ask about any dating system you hear proposed--old earth, -or- young earth. Ask yourself--is what's proposed to be constant really constant? And is all of the equation there (i.e., are we counting things that are being destroyed, but not things being created, or vice versa)?
The article I posted up above on this topic is a really good one, so I'll repost the link. Seriously. The science there is good, and the questions answered are many. It's long, but I think it'll give you a lot to think about it. (And that article's by a Christian, too, so it's hardly some atheist trying to destroy everyone's faith.) But just to whet your appetite and motivate you, here are some things I learned.
You know how you said that in order to do radiometric dating, you have to know how much of the parent material was there in the first place? That's actually not true. You don't. When radioactive things decay, they don't just disappear, rather they turn into other things. For example, when potassium-40 decays, it doesn't disappear--rather, it turns into calcium-40 and argon-40 at a constant rate. The thing that's decaying is called the parent, and the things it turn into are called the daughter products. So it turns out due to the math that all you have to do is measure the ratio of parent to daughter product, factor in the half life, and you get the date. You don't have to know how much there originally was.
Don't you have to know the original ratio? Well... they have ways to figure that out. It's really neat. Sometimes you can't use a particular daughter product to measure things because it occurs so much in nature. Sometimes daughter products decay into other daughter products, and you can get enough information to do the math and figure out what the original ratio was and thus the age. Sometimes the daughter products wouldn't be in the original--i.e., if they're a gas and what you're dating is lava. It should escape. Sometimes the daughter products occur in nature with a specific ratio of isotopes and the ones that come from the decay occur in a different ratio--and they can measure that and figure it out. It's really cool. I'm not going to explain the whole thing on the forum--I don't have the expertise, and I can't anyway. But you should go read it--if nothing else, in the interest of fairness, so you know the other side.
Do we have good reason to assume the decay rates are constant? Well, we've been measuring them for 50 years--some elements, more like 100 years. And more than that, we can measure them from astronomy. Looking many thousands of light-years away and observing something like supernova is literally looking back in time (even if you don't believe you're looking back the millions of years the distance equates to, you're still looking back in time). You're observing an ancient event, and what's more, the radioactive decay of certain elements is something you can astronomically measure. Scientists can literally watch it happening in the past and measure the rate. (Is that not cool?)
Are we missing half the equation--might parent material have gone in and out, or daughter material? Well, since what gets dated is typically in the *middle* of rocks, that doesn't seem likely. Certain things, though--like a rock getting remolten or something--can mess it up. And the methods detect that. It's way cool.
The method seems to work because it's consistent. They usually use two or three different methods on the same rock to date it, to be sure as to what the date is--methods that use totally different elements--and only trust the date if the methods agree. And these things do routinely agree! And furthermore, when you look at the oldest known rocks from different methods, you get a ton of dates that are all in a similar range. The consistency is powerful evidence that the method works.
That's just a teaser for you--don't pretend I've given you the whole story, that's just to get you to read the paper. Here's one more teaser.
In certain parts of the world, things seasonally change and leave layers. At the bottom of certain lakes, for example, the stuff that sinks to the bottom in the summer is different from the stuff that's there in the winter, and it makes layers. At the ice caps, the snow that falls in the summer is different from that that falls in the winter, and furthermore there's a layer of dust every spring that gets blown down there. It makes layers. Anyway, they drill out sections of these things out and count the layers, and it goes back a long ways. The dust layers in the ice caps go back 160,000 years. Does that not seem like good evidence that the earth is old? Go read about it.
My view on this topic is very certain and one-sided. Though I grew up in the church surrounded by creationist science, and originally believed in the young earth, I quickly changed my mind when I started seriously studying things. And though I can't claim to have studied things very completely, I have been convinced that the old-earthers have a pretty solid scientific case. The world really does seem to be 4.6 billion years old. The universe really does seem to be 15 billion years old. Though I pride myself on keeping an open mind on most things, I really do think that scientifically speaking, this is an closed case. I'm convinced.
=================
On intelligent design:
The argument people usually make for intelligent design is that information can't increase without an intelligent source. The problem with that is, nobody knows what information is, and nobody can explain why it requires intelligence.
What is information? Do you know what it is? Is it complexity? Random mutations can generate an awful lot of complexity. An ant walking along the beach traces out an awfully complex path, but nobody would suppose that means it's designed. How about meaningful complexity? Well, what do you mean by 'meaningful'? The motions of the planets follow complex paths, meaningful in that they can be interpreted by a simple rule. A snowflake is a complex shape, and meaningful in terms of beauty--but its form is still determined by the rules of water freezing into ice.
We know that mutations can happen that make animals lose body parts--there was a beneficial mutation, for example, that made beetles lose their wings on a very windy island. What about body parts changing, becoming more complex? If it just so happens that a simple mutation makes a fin a bit more like a leg, is that an increase in information?
It may seem like you know what information is, but I haven't seen a definition that holds water for very long. And believe me, I've studied this inside and out. I've read every important paper from the Discovery Institute, I've read the important books. I even worked my way through Dembski's "The Design Inference"--the absolute most technical book on the subject, the peer-reviewed philosophy book. It isn't there. The definitions don't hold up, the arguments don't hold together.
I would love for ID to be true. I still hope it can succeed, perhaps as a soft science, if not a hard one. I would desperately love for intelligent design arguments to work on origins, but the ones I have seen don't do the job. I cannot intellectually honestly say that they work. I'm a scholar, I've studied it, and it isn't there. They don't have a good definition of information that has to come from an intelligence.
This is the deepest flaw in the idea, in my eyes--the death-knell of the whole thing. To be able to infer design, you have to have experience. You can't tell if a DNA sequence is designed or random unless you have experience reading them, and you know what coding for useful proteins looks like. You can't tell if a circle of rocks in the forest is designed or random unless you study that sort of thing, and you know what sorts of patterns are left by erosion and what sorts are left by campers. You can never tell when something is designed unless you have a full appreciation of the natural laws at work. You can't tell if life is designed, because you can't look out and say, "Ok, we know life on this planet was designed, and it looks like this... and over here on this planet, it evolved, and it looks like this..." Unless you can do that (and we can't), the whole affair is armchair science.
Intelligent Design can't ever defeat evolution. Because in order to answer the question of whether something is intelligently designed, you have to first know the complete answer to whether or not it could have evolved, and what it would look like if it did. This we can't know (or at least don't know now about a lot of things).
For all that, the apparent design in the world is impressive, isn't it? I'll admit the intuitive design argument still holds a bit of sway with me, even if I can't honestly advocate the philosophical version.
====================
I had planned to write a bit about evolution for you, but I've changed my mind, because it's a topic I don't know as much about. And besides, I think my post has gotten quite long enough (geez, I need to learn to shorten these things). But I'll say this: I'm sure some sorts of genetic change over time happens to population groups. I'm mostly persuaded that a lot of the 'species' we have today weren't originally separate species. I think it's possible that all life descended from a common ancestor. Could evolution have occured without God's miraculous help--could scales really become feathers, arms really become wings, eyes really develop their complexity through sheer randomness? On this I'm still quite skeptical. I'm inclined to say no. But I can't honestly be so bold--I can't truly say I know it couldn't have happened or didn't happen, only that I'm skeptical. It's something I'm still researching. (Which is to say, my views are in flux. Stay tuned.
)
After all that, if you're still reading, I have two pieces of advice:
For Christians in general, don't make origins the cornerstone of your faith. There are a lot of people church--and even scientists within the church!--who say some very foolish things about it. Origins matters a lot to people, and almost everyone thinks they know more about it than they do. Building your faith on others' opinions is setting yourself up for a fall. If you're an expert on something, go ahead and trust it to your level of expertise, but if you don't know the first thing about biology, and your pastor says, "This bioligical thing makes evolution impossible, proving God exists and the Bible was right!"... take it with a grain of salt. There are a lot of well-meaning people, especially in the church, who say a lot of things that just aren't so. Origins is a large, difficult subject, and a tenuous support for faith.
For creationists in particular, and everyone in general, please make sure you spend some time 'reading the other side'. The origins debate is a lot like a political debate: everyone paints their opponents unfairly. If you only ever read stuff published by ICR, you simply won't have a clue when it comes to what scientists really say about evolution. ID doesn't give a fair picture of the other sides. Reasons To Believe doesn't always, either. Make sure you read what a lot of people are saying--if you limit yourself to one side, you're only going to look foolish in the end. (This goes double for creationists: get a good, modern book on evolution--and I don't mean your 9th grade biology book--and read it. I guarantee, from personal experience, what the creationist scientists tell you evolutionists believe isn't the whole story. You still have the right to disagree with them, but at least read the other side!)
Hope this is helpful to you, Stryker. It's long, I know, but it's meant to be helpful and not antagonistic. I can't help you by pointing you to too many resources, but I can highly encourage you to start by reading the article I posted, and really wrestling with the arguments he makes. I can't force you to read it, but I can tell you--as one Christian just trying to help another--it's stuff that you really ought to know.
I'm a fellow Christian with you. I am a devoted follower of Jesus, a member of an evangelical church (Baptist to be specific), and I hold to the inerrancy of the Bible. I study the Bible a lot, and in fact I'm even teaching a Sunday School class on Biblical Interpretation at my Church, starting this Sunday. Given all that, you can know that I don't have any reason to promote any sort of atheistic agenda, and that I'm no n00b studying the Bible and not going to make silly mistakes or read things out of context. I love God, I have studied the Bible a lot, and I've studied creation/evolution a lot. Bear that in mind when you read what I say.
Let me make clear at the start that the age of the earth is a controversy within the church--that there are Bible-believing folks on both sides of the issue. I can talk more about the interpretation of Genesis 1 if you want, but I suspect you've heard the arguments. It sounds like your objections are scientific, not Biblical, and that's commendable. I just wanted to make sure that was clear: not everyone agrees that the Bible spells out the age of the earth, and this isn't some people "doubting scripture" or "being unfaithful" to it. It's honest difference of opinion on what it says. I don't think we can say for sure that the Bible says a lot, technically speaking about origins--other than that God ultimately is the one who made us.
Just to give the run-down, though, there are those who think Genesis 1 gives a literal account of creation as it happened, in which each day is 24 hours and each creation is miraculous--creation out of nothing. There are those who think the days in Genesis 1 are symbolic of long ages, and the chapter gives the details of creation over six ages--ages stretching many millions of years each. There are those who think that between 1:1 and 1:2 is a whole other failed creation, and Genesis 1 gives an account of the rebuilding and recreation, not the original creation. And then there are those who think the entire chapter is poetic and metaphorical, a creative framework, not a literal history. There are a number of other views, too--one of the most remarkable I've run into is that of a Biblical scholar who believes that Genesis 1 is an account of the creation of the garden of Eden, not the whole world, and he thinks a wider reading is unscientific, illogical and furthermore bad interpretation!
All of the people who hold these views believe that God is the creator. All of these people believe the Bible is true. They just disagree on how to interpret it. (Again, I doubt this is news to you... I just wanted to get it out there.)
So... on to the science.
(Let me preface this by saying that I am not a scientist, nor do I have much training in hard science. Though I study things as a hobby, others with more expertise shouldn't feel shy about correcting me if I get my facts wrong here.)
Now, origins is a really big topic. Asking someone on an internet forum to prove things to you is asking too much--it's like asking me to give you 6 years' worth of math education in a single post. It's not going to happen. Ultimately, you're responsible for your own learning--you have to be the one who reads the books, does the research, and learns things. All I can do is give you some resources, critique your arguments, and maybe push you in the right direction. So, just so you know: this stuff isn't proof. It's a push. But it might shake you up a bit.
=======================
Age of the earth:
There are two things to watch out for in dating arguments--two general tricks to be careful of.
One is leaving out half of the equation. For example, I saw an argument looking at the age of the earth based on how much of a certain mineral there was in the oceans. They took how much of that mineral was in the ocean now, and divided it by the rate it was coming into the ocean (via rivers and stuff), and got that it had been happining for about 11,000 years. The problem with this argument was that they didn't account for how fast the stuff was going out of the ocean. As a matter of fact, the stuff was going in and out at pretty much the same rate, due to different natural processes--so you obviously couldn't use the amount in the ocean to date anything. The whole argument was flawed.
That's something to consider with respect to the argument you made about rocks (or mountains) being pointy and sharp. Erosion wears down rocks and makes them smooth, especially if it's given a lot of time in which to do it. So we know the pointy rocks should be disappearing. But that's only half of the equation. Is there anything that makes new pointy rocks? Sure. Old ones getting broken. Geological forces causing big layers of rock to buckle, shift, and break. (I don't know what else--I pulled those out of thin air. I'm no geologist.) How much do each of those things happen? Is it possible that the earth is making pointy rocks much faster than it's wearing them smooth? Or should it be wearing them smooth much faster than it's making new pointy ones? If you don't know, then you need to do more research about it in order to be fair--because for all you know, the earth could have just the right number of pointy rocks for being very old.
The other thing to watch out for is the assumption that processes have been constant. There was a guy on the DBB about a year ago I think that made an argument about the size of the sun. He quoted an article that said the sun's radius had decreased in size by 0.5% in the last 400 years (or something like that), and concluded that if the old earth view was correct, the sun must have originally been the size of the whole solar system! Stop and think about this for a moment though. Is there any reason to suppose that the sun's radius has to change at a constant rate through all of history? Maybe it grows and shrinks. Or maybe it's the volume that changes, not the radius. Or maybe it grows logarithmically, or exponentially, or some other way than at a constant rate. There are lots of possibilities. Whenever someone wants to use something constant to date by, ask yourself--is there a good reason why that thing should have remained constant through the years?
This is a problem with the argument you gave about the grand canyon. It has a river in it, and if that river had been there for 4.6 billion years, it might have made a much bigger canyon. But is there any reason to suppose that process must have been constant? Is it likely, given the old earth view, that the river was there for the entire 4.6 billion years? Of course not. Rivers change course. The world's been through a lot of climate changes--there might not have even been such a river for a lot of its history. Would the size and speed of the river have to stay constant over those 4.6 billion years? How about the hardness of the rock it's cutting through? Of course not. It's all just guesswork.
In general, these are good questions to ask about any dating system you hear proposed--old earth, -or- young earth. Ask yourself--is what's proposed to be constant really constant? And is all of the equation there (i.e., are we counting things that are being destroyed, but not things being created, or vice versa)?
The article I posted up above on this topic is a really good one, so I'll repost the link. Seriously. The science there is good, and the questions answered are many. It's long, but I think it'll give you a lot to think about it. (And that article's by a Christian, too, so it's hardly some atheist trying to destroy everyone's faith.) But just to whet your appetite and motivate you, here are some things I learned.
You know how you said that in order to do radiometric dating, you have to know how much of the parent material was there in the first place? That's actually not true. You don't. When radioactive things decay, they don't just disappear, rather they turn into other things. For example, when potassium-40 decays, it doesn't disappear--rather, it turns into calcium-40 and argon-40 at a constant rate. The thing that's decaying is called the parent, and the things it turn into are called the daughter products. So it turns out due to the math that all you have to do is measure the ratio of parent to daughter product, factor in the half life, and you get the date. You don't have to know how much there originally was.
Don't you have to know the original ratio? Well... they have ways to figure that out. It's really neat. Sometimes you can't use a particular daughter product to measure things because it occurs so much in nature. Sometimes daughter products decay into other daughter products, and you can get enough information to do the math and figure out what the original ratio was and thus the age. Sometimes the daughter products wouldn't be in the original--i.e., if they're a gas and what you're dating is lava. It should escape. Sometimes the daughter products occur in nature with a specific ratio of isotopes and the ones that come from the decay occur in a different ratio--and they can measure that and figure it out. It's really cool. I'm not going to explain the whole thing on the forum--I don't have the expertise, and I can't anyway. But you should go read it--if nothing else, in the interest of fairness, so you know the other side.
Do we have good reason to assume the decay rates are constant? Well, we've been measuring them for 50 years--some elements, more like 100 years. And more than that, we can measure them from astronomy. Looking many thousands of light-years away and observing something like supernova is literally looking back in time (even if you don't believe you're looking back the millions of years the distance equates to, you're still looking back in time). You're observing an ancient event, and what's more, the radioactive decay of certain elements is something you can astronomically measure. Scientists can literally watch it happening in the past and measure the rate. (Is that not cool?)
Are we missing half the equation--might parent material have gone in and out, or daughter material? Well, since what gets dated is typically in the *middle* of rocks, that doesn't seem likely. Certain things, though--like a rock getting remolten or something--can mess it up. And the methods detect that. It's way cool.
The method seems to work because it's consistent. They usually use two or three different methods on the same rock to date it, to be sure as to what the date is--methods that use totally different elements--and only trust the date if the methods agree. And these things do routinely agree! And furthermore, when you look at the oldest known rocks from different methods, you get a ton of dates that are all in a similar range. The consistency is powerful evidence that the method works.
That's just a teaser for you--don't pretend I've given you the whole story, that's just to get you to read the paper. Here's one more teaser.
In certain parts of the world, things seasonally change and leave layers. At the bottom of certain lakes, for example, the stuff that sinks to the bottom in the summer is different from the stuff that's there in the winter, and it makes layers. At the ice caps, the snow that falls in the summer is different from that that falls in the winter, and furthermore there's a layer of dust every spring that gets blown down there. It makes layers. Anyway, they drill out sections of these things out and count the layers, and it goes back a long ways. The dust layers in the ice caps go back 160,000 years. Does that not seem like good evidence that the earth is old? Go read about it.
My view on this topic is very certain and one-sided. Though I grew up in the church surrounded by creationist science, and originally believed in the young earth, I quickly changed my mind when I started seriously studying things. And though I can't claim to have studied things very completely, I have been convinced that the old-earthers have a pretty solid scientific case. The world really does seem to be 4.6 billion years old. The universe really does seem to be 15 billion years old. Though I pride myself on keeping an open mind on most things, I really do think that scientifically speaking, this is an closed case. I'm convinced.
=================
On intelligent design:
The argument people usually make for intelligent design is that information can't increase without an intelligent source. The problem with that is, nobody knows what information is, and nobody can explain why it requires intelligence.
What is information? Do you know what it is? Is it complexity? Random mutations can generate an awful lot of complexity. An ant walking along the beach traces out an awfully complex path, but nobody would suppose that means it's designed. How about meaningful complexity? Well, what do you mean by 'meaningful'? The motions of the planets follow complex paths, meaningful in that they can be interpreted by a simple rule. A snowflake is a complex shape, and meaningful in terms of beauty--but its form is still determined by the rules of water freezing into ice.
We know that mutations can happen that make animals lose body parts--there was a beneficial mutation, for example, that made beetles lose their wings on a very windy island. What about body parts changing, becoming more complex? If it just so happens that a simple mutation makes a fin a bit more like a leg, is that an increase in information?
It may seem like you know what information is, but I haven't seen a definition that holds water for very long. And believe me, I've studied this inside and out. I've read every important paper from the Discovery Institute, I've read the important books. I even worked my way through Dembski's "The Design Inference"--the absolute most technical book on the subject, the peer-reviewed philosophy book. It isn't there. The definitions don't hold up, the arguments don't hold together.
I would love for ID to be true. I still hope it can succeed, perhaps as a soft science, if not a hard one. I would desperately love for intelligent design arguments to work on origins, but the ones I have seen don't do the job. I cannot intellectually honestly say that they work. I'm a scholar, I've studied it, and it isn't there. They don't have a good definition of information that has to come from an intelligence.
This is the deepest flaw in the idea, in my eyes--the death-knell of the whole thing. To be able to infer design, you have to have experience. You can't tell if a DNA sequence is designed or random unless you have experience reading them, and you know what coding for useful proteins looks like. You can't tell if a circle of rocks in the forest is designed or random unless you study that sort of thing, and you know what sorts of patterns are left by erosion and what sorts are left by campers. You can never tell when something is designed unless you have a full appreciation of the natural laws at work. You can't tell if life is designed, because you can't look out and say, "Ok, we know life on this planet was designed, and it looks like this... and over here on this planet, it evolved, and it looks like this..." Unless you can do that (and we can't), the whole affair is armchair science.
Intelligent Design can't ever defeat evolution. Because in order to answer the question of whether something is intelligently designed, you have to first know the complete answer to whether or not it could have evolved, and what it would look like if it did. This we can't know (or at least don't know now about a lot of things).
For all that, the apparent design in the world is impressive, isn't it? I'll admit the intuitive design argument still holds a bit of sway with me, even if I can't honestly advocate the philosophical version.
====================
I had planned to write a bit about evolution for you, but I've changed my mind, because it's a topic I don't know as much about. And besides, I think my post has gotten quite long enough (geez, I need to learn to shorten these things). But I'll say this: I'm sure some sorts of genetic change over time happens to population groups. I'm mostly persuaded that a lot of the 'species' we have today weren't originally separate species. I think it's possible that all life descended from a common ancestor. Could evolution have occured without God's miraculous help--could scales really become feathers, arms really become wings, eyes really develop their complexity through sheer randomness? On this I'm still quite skeptical. I'm inclined to say no. But I can't honestly be so bold--I can't truly say I know it couldn't have happened or didn't happen, only that I'm skeptical. It's something I'm still researching. (Which is to say, my views are in flux. Stay tuned.
) After all that, if you're still reading, I have two pieces of advice:
For Christians in general, don't make origins the cornerstone of your faith. There are a lot of people church--and even scientists within the church!--who say some very foolish things about it. Origins matters a lot to people, and almost everyone thinks they know more about it than they do. Building your faith on others' opinions is setting yourself up for a fall. If you're an expert on something, go ahead and trust it to your level of expertise, but if you don't know the first thing about biology, and your pastor says, "This bioligical thing makes evolution impossible, proving God exists and the Bible was right!"... take it with a grain of salt. There are a lot of well-meaning people, especially in the church, who say a lot of things that just aren't so. Origins is a large, difficult subject, and a tenuous support for faith.
For creationists in particular, and everyone in general, please make sure you spend some time 'reading the other side'. The origins debate is a lot like a political debate: everyone paints their opponents unfairly. If you only ever read stuff published by ICR, you simply won't have a clue when it comes to what scientists really say about evolution. ID doesn't give a fair picture of the other sides. Reasons To Believe doesn't always, either. Make sure you read what a lot of people are saying--if you limit yourself to one side, you're only going to look foolish in the end. (This goes double for creationists: get a good, modern book on evolution--and I don't mean your 9th grade biology book--and read it. I guarantee, from personal experience, what the creationist scientists tell you evolutionists believe isn't the whole story. You still have the right to disagree with them, but at least read the other side!)
Hope this is helpful to you, Stryker. It's long, I know, but it's meant to be helpful and not antagonistic. I can't help you by pointing you to too many resources, but I can highly encourage you to start by reading the article I posted, and really wrestling with the arguments he makes. I can't force you to read it, but I can tell you--as one Christian just trying to help another--it's stuff that you really ought to know.
Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 3:11 am
I have more experience with it than you might guess. As a teen/young adult I was into Christian religion big time - more than most - and became disillusioned when I discovered both that 1) most of my peers in the church weren't devoted to it, and 2) in the end I couldn't stay devoted to it myself. But for a while I was definitely in the space you're in now.Drakona wrote:It is often the case that when someone has no experience with something, they think it's simple and easy to explain. Creationists often think evolution is simple--a theory that can be fully taught in ten minutes. Atheists often think the Bible is simple--something you can read cover to cover in a week, and understand as much as there is to know. Math is full of theorems that seem utterly simple until you try to prove them. And people who put prayer down to psychology always strike me that way--as explaining in simple terms something they have no real experience with.
What I've realized since then is that the feelings of inspiration, security, peace, and well-being that we held up as a validation of faith were actually acheivable in other ways. But this is a much harder path to follow, because in some ways it's not instinctual to explore your own thoughts. It's more instinctual to be... instinctual.
The second part of coming to grips with things was understanding the role psychology plays. Most people live their lives without delving into it that deeply, but sometimes life forces you too... and it's alarming how convinced a person can be to think that a certain thing is true.
Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 3:31 am
Hmm. We must simply have had different experiences, MehYam. I'm not talking about praying and 'feeling peace' or 'feeling security' or taking the first wishful thought that comes into your mind as the voice of God. I'm not talking about the vanilla stuff that goes on on Sunday mornings. I'm talking about the results of a lot of serious prayer, in private, over years.
I'm talking about praying and hearing a voice that tells you something you never knew before. I'm talking about praying and interacting with a being much grander than you are. I'm talking about praying and having your deepest assumptions ripped out, gutted, and reformed. I'm not talking about something you can do on command, I'm talking about a God who meets you at his own discression. I'm talking about praying, receiving direction, following that direction, and changing lives. I'm talking about praying, and watching miracles happen.
Let me tell you, I've seen some crazy stuff. I've learned some deep stuff. I've been changed in deep ways. If prayer isn't real, then... then what I just wrote should scare both you and me. I'm not just misguided, I'm actually insane. And then some.
I'm talking about praying and hearing a voice that tells you something you never knew before. I'm talking about praying and interacting with a being much grander than you are. I'm talking about praying and having your deepest assumptions ripped out, gutted, and reformed. I'm not talking about something you can do on command, I'm talking about a God who meets you at his own discression. I'm talking about praying, receiving direction, following that direction, and changing lives. I'm talking about praying, and watching miracles happen.
Let me tell you, I've seen some crazy stuff. I've learned some deep stuff. I've been changed in deep ways. If prayer isn't real, then... then what I just wrote should scare both you and me. I'm not just misguided, I'm actually insane. And then some.
Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 8:54 am
You obviously either did not read my post to you, or you simply could not understand it, or you simply refused to understand it.bet51987 wrote: Why can't religious instructors answer my questions. Too many questions...no GOOD answers.
I feel for you - loosing a parent is hard (I know - I lost my mother too), but blaming God for that is an atitude based on emotion, and the pain of separation, not on truth. I hope as you grow you find peace.
Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 10:35 am
Thank you for your post, Drakona. You're the first person I've seen on here that can debate using evidence instead of mudslinging and straw men. I haven't read the whole article (a scientific article with a table of contents is generally not something you go through in a day), but they have some good points in there.
I do realize that old-earth creationists are still creationists, and I believe they are just as Christian as any other person who believes the Gospel story. My arguments are designed to say that there is no way any of this could have happened without a God.
Geological and mineral processes are not extremely accurate dating systems. However, much activity that I have seen tends to make me believe in a young earth. The "layers" you suggested seem at first to be a very good indicator of the age of the earth; but like you yourself said before, these processes are not set in stone. For instance, Mount St. Helens, when it exploded in 1983, created several layers of rock due to hardening magma/lava. Radiometric dating used on these rocks dated them as about 1 million years old. Other dating methods were used, and agreed. Does that mean the rock was 1 million years old?
It's interesting to note that every object in our world is radioactive, if only slightly so. The materials your house is made of, your computer, everything in our universe has a small amount of radiation. Thus, every object in our universe is receiving a constant, albeit small, amount of radiation.
I've read a refutation of this article somewhere, and, though I don't have the time now, I'll see if I can dig it up and analyze both of these documents sometime within the next few days.
I do realize that old-earth creationists are still creationists, and I believe they are just as Christian as any other person who believes the Gospel story. My arguments are designed to say that there is no way any of this could have happened without a God.
Geological and mineral processes are not extremely accurate dating systems. However, much activity that I have seen tends to make me believe in a young earth. The "layers" you suggested seem at first to be a very good indicator of the age of the earth; but like you yourself said before, these processes are not set in stone. For instance, Mount St. Helens, when it exploded in 1983, created several layers of rock due to hardening magma/lava. Radiometric dating used on these rocks dated them as about 1 million years old. Other dating methods were used, and agreed. Does that mean the rock was 1 million years old?
It's interesting to note that every object in our world is radioactive, if only slightly so. The materials your house is made of, your computer, everything in our universe has a small amount of radiation. Thus, every object in our universe is receiving a constant, albeit small, amount of radiation.
I've read a refutation of this article somewhere, and, though I don't have the time now, I'll see if I can dig it up and analyze both of these documents sometime within the next few days.
Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 12:47 pm
That sounds pretty cool. If you find the refutation, go ahead and post it here for me to learn from, too. (Or PM me with it if the thread's dead and/or people are still flaming you...)
I know it's long... you don't have to deal with it in the course of this thread. Stuff like that takes me months to really work through. But I'd encourage you to really persevere and and do the research--for your own sake. In fact, if you'd like, we can start up an email group and work through it--read a bit, give critiques/poke holes in it, look for refutations, look for refutations of the refutations, and figure out what we need to research further. I'm no scientist, but I know a thing or two about how to do research, and I'm not too shabby at logic--and this is a subject I've been meaning to study more in depth for some time.
Regaurding the lava dating, there's something else I know to be cautious of. Radiometric dating methods come with a lot of different half-lives attached--some on the order of 5,000 years, others on the order of 2,000,000 years. And the error on them is related to the half-life. (The reason is that if you use it to date something to young or too old, there isn't enough of the parent or daughter material around to measure accurately.) On the shorter ones, for example, you might get the date to within a 500 years--but you can only use it on stuff that's at most 50,000 years old. On the longer ones, you get the date to within a million years, and you can use it on stuff up to a billion years old. (I'm making up the numbers up, here, just so you know--it's just an example to demonstrate the principle, I don't have specific elements in mind. But I do know the ranges in which these things are accurate are only about an order of magnitude, or at most two.)
Sometimes people use the ones with very long half lives on things that happened recently. If they do that, they should get back a date like "1,000,000 +/- 5,000,000 years." It doesn't tell you a whole lot about which decade it happened in. Mostly it's just telling you that what you're trying to measure is smaller than the smallest unit that system can measure.
Check it out and see if that's what happened. I bet it is--because I know they shouldn't have been using a method that can give an answer as big as "one million" for something that happened two decades ago. Nothing has a range of accuracy that big!
Even so, it's good to be critical of everything, even the things I write. Good to see you think about stuff.
I know it's long... you don't have to deal with it in the course of this thread. Stuff like that takes me months to really work through. But I'd encourage you to really persevere and and do the research--for your own sake. In fact, if you'd like, we can start up an email group and work through it--read a bit, give critiques/poke holes in it, look for refutations, look for refutations of the refutations, and figure out what we need to research further. I'm no scientist, but I know a thing or two about how to do research, and I'm not too shabby at logic--and this is a subject I've been meaning to study more in depth for some time.
Regaurding the lava dating, there's something else I know to be cautious of. Radiometric dating methods come with a lot of different half-lives attached--some on the order of 5,000 years, others on the order of 2,000,000 years. And the error on them is related to the half-life. (The reason is that if you use it to date something to young or too old, there isn't enough of the parent or daughter material around to measure accurately.) On the shorter ones, for example, you might get the date to within a 500 years--but you can only use it on stuff that's at most 50,000 years old. On the longer ones, you get the date to within a million years, and you can use it on stuff up to a billion years old. (I'm making up the numbers up, here, just so you know--it's just an example to demonstrate the principle, I don't have specific elements in mind. But I do know the ranges in which these things are accurate are only about an order of magnitude, or at most two.)
Sometimes people use the ones with very long half lives on things that happened recently. If they do that, they should get back a date like "1,000,000 +/- 5,000,000 years." It doesn't tell you a whole lot about which decade it happened in. Mostly it's just telling you that what you're trying to measure is smaller than the smallest unit that system can measure.
Check it out and see if that's what happened. I bet it is--because I know they shouldn't have been using a method that can give an answer as big as "one million" for something that happened two decades ago. Nothing has a range of accuracy that big!
Even so, it's good to be critical of everything, even the things I write.
Good to see you think about stuff.Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 3:07 pm
Like any good father, God has allowed his children to make their own decisions, even if those decisions are against his advice.
Shoku....Thanks for the reply, but to me God is not a good father at all. You can talk to him, but he will never answer back. I see kids smoking, swearing, doing drugs, some having sex already. They are popular and I envied them a little, maybe more than a just a little. Some even teased me for not trying things. but, I know this, I was always afraid of what my father would do to me if I ever got caught. Not physically, cause he's never hit me, ever. But he would have taken away my freedom and put me in reform school or something. There is no way he would have let me do any of those things. That's the difference.It was Mankind who rejected God, not God who rejected us. We are the living result of that bad decision. Any attention given to us by God is indeed an undeserved kindness.
I've read every word you typed. But the point is, I'm not guilty of anything. I prayed to him more than any other person I think, and I never did anything to God. I'm not guilty of any wrong except in God's eyes who condems me by association. If that's the truth then I have no use for him even if he turns out to be real. I rather just die and be dead than live with a bad role model with that attitude.
Another thing...my mother didn't die. I don't know where she is. When my parents married, they didn't want children so I'm the awful accident that happened. She was never a loving mother, never there for me when I was sick, and when I was 10 she had enough. She left us without even saying goodbye. You can't come close to imagining what I went thru. What my dad went thru trying to raise me alone. The bible?...I read it all looking for an answer and found nothing but wishful thinking. I survived because my father became both father and mother to me, a good role model, and loved me enough for a hundred people. I know now that it was my mother who didn't want me and I have no use for her anymore either. Geez...I'm tearing up...funny how emotions are.
I accept what other people believe, I feel happy for them believing they have a place to go someday. I hope they win, and I'm happy some have accepted what I believe. I love you guys.
Anyway....I'm very much a "Catholic girl" on the outside and always will be....but only because of my dad.
Bettina
Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 7:27 pm
But why are you so mad at God? I've gone thru as much or far worse teasing than you have..all the way through school. Horrible teasing, getting beat up just because i have a funny sounding name and my ears were too big.
My folks divorced when I was 11 and I was responsible for my 2 younger brothers. My dad married a woman that was a nazi.
Was all this God's fault? NO! It's life. If you haven't noticed yet. People are generally selfish and are more quick to tear people and things down than they are to give you a smile.
Welcome to LIFE. People are basically Evil. Not good. Geez.. watch people drive in heavy traffic sometime. (i know you don't drive) Listen to the news. The evidence is Right THere!
Don't blame God for something that isn't his fault. He did not tell or force people to do the things they do like leave a family or tease you.
You are not alone in your pain. There are roughly 6.3 Billion people out there that are in the Same circumstance or far Worse than you.
You say you don't believe in God, but I see you pointing quite an angry finger at him. Which is it Bettina? do you REALLY believe in him or Not?
Ultimately you must decide and stop lying to yourself. I know you are young and the things you are going through are by no means easy. Most of us here have been through simular things.
If I sound harsh, I don't mean too. You're a great person. But I see you running in circles reacting from emotion. You will never find calm if you don't stand still.
My folks divorced when I was 11 and I was responsible for my 2 younger brothers. My dad married a woman that was a nazi.
Was all this God's fault? NO! It's life. If you haven't noticed yet. People are generally selfish and are more quick to tear people and things down than they are to give you a smile.
Welcome to LIFE. People are basically Evil. Not good. Geez.. watch people drive in heavy traffic sometime. (i know you don't drive) Listen to the news. The evidence is Right THere!
Don't blame God for something that isn't his fault. He did not tell or force people to do the things they do like leave a family or tease you.
You are not alone in your pain. There are roughly 6.3 Billion people out there that are in the Same circumstance or far Worse than you.
You say you don't believe in God, but I see you pointing quite an angry finger at him. Which is it Bettina? do you REALLY believe in him or Not?
Ultimately you must decide and stop lying to yourself. I know you are young and the things you are going through are by no means easy. Most of us here have been through simular things.
If I sound harsh, I don't mean too. You're a great person. But I see you running in circles reacting from emotion. You will never find calm if you don't stand still.
Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 8:06 pm
No......Duper wrote:You say you don't believe in God, but I see you pointing quite an angry finger at him. Which is it Bettina? do you REALLY believe in him or Not?
I've already gone thru this in other posts....
I can look at both sides...God or no God...because I've been on both sides. I was with God once, then I walked on the fence, then went to the other side.
Let me see, pain, suffering, death, destruction, rape, murder, childrens hospitals, etc etc etc..All of this he COULD stop in a heartbeat...but he won't because of some rule that got broken....and I'm getting blamed for it. That's why I hate him and don't want to be on his side......Duper wrote:But why are you so mad at God?
Now to answer your real question, The only way I can understand all of the above, is the no god scenario. It's the only one that makes sense for me.
Thanks for caring about my well being Duper.
Bettina
Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 8:18 pm
But he did do something. Jesus. Everyone is responsible for themselves and will be held accountable thusly. You remember the parable of the wheat and the tairs? This is what it means. don't you remember what happened in the garden of Eden?
If you don't believe these things, then you have really no room to say you believe in God. He told us these things with the scriptures so that we would have an answer. You have been told many Many times over in this forum why "God doesn't do anything". And everytime you basically say . "Hmpf! that's not good enough for me."
Get off it already.
btw, noone is blaming You. If it's because you attend a Catholic church, then it's the image that demomination has created for themselves over the Centuries.
This is not your fault. Anyone who thinks that is it needs a shrink.
to the quick. Your anger is mis-directed. The blame is on the people that are bothering you. Not God. He'll deal with them later.
If you don't believe these things, then you have really no room to say you believe in God. He told us these things with the scriptures so that we would have an answer. You have been told many Many times over in this forum why "God doesn't do anything". And everytime you basically say . "Hmpf! that's not good enough for me."
Get off it already.
btw, noone is blaming You. If it's because you attend a Catholic church, then it's the image that demomination has created for themselves over the Centuries.
This is not your fault. Anyone who thinks that is it needs a shrink.
to the quick. Your anger is mis-directed. The blame is on the people that are bothering you. Not God. He'll deal with them later.
Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 8:48 pm
Duper:
Faith is a funny thing. It seems that you either have it or not. Those that believe there is a God will find a model for God that suits their concept and believe in that. Stryker and Drakona both believe in the Christian God but their view of God is very different. I don't believe in God at all but that is me not you. Have a look around and see if there is a concept of God that helps you with your pain and brings joy into your life.
I am not a Buddhist but I find a lot of resonance in the root philosophy of Buddhism. Buddhism as an organized religion has many failings in my view but still, a religion that does not have any God (The Buddha was a human like the rest of us and never claimed otherwise) is kind of refreshing.
You might go to your local library and look at "Fundamentals of Tibetan Buddhism" by the Dali Lama. This is NOT an attempt at conversion away from Christianity I just think you might find some peace in looking at the world a little differently.
Drakona you always amaze me with your clear and cogent posts. Thank you for taking so much time from your day to speak so patiently and logicaly with Stryker while I get frustrated and basicly just yell at him. You are a great advertisement for enlightened Christianity ( I just made that term up I think)
I'm sorry Duper but giving the world Jesus does not help much if you are too young or too isolated or mentally handicaped or too ignorant or etc.....to know what the offer means. God still comes off as somewhat cruel to the innocent.
Duper has a good point Bettina. You cannot be angry at somthing that you believe does not exist.You say you don't believe in God, but I see you pointing quite an angry finger at him. Which is it Bettina? do you REALLY believe in him or Not?
Faith is a funny thing. It seems that you either have it or not. Those that believe there is a God will find a model for God that suits their concept and believe in that. Stryker and Drakona both believe in the Christian God but their view of God is very different. I don't believe in God at all but that is me not you. Have a look around and see if there is a concept of God that helps you with your pain and brings joy into your life.
I am not a Buddhist but I find a lot of resonance in the root philosophy of Buddhism. Buddhism as an organized religion has many failings in my view but still, a religion that does not have any God (The Buddha was a human like the rest of us and never claimed otherwise) is kind of refreshing.
You might go to your local library and look at "Fundamentals of Tibetan Buddhism" by the Dali Lama. This is NOT an attempt at conversion away from Christianity I just think you might find some peace in looking at the world a little differently.
Drakona you always amaze me with your clear and cogent posts. Thank you for taking so much time from your day to speak so patiently and logicaly with Stryker while I get frustrated and basicly just yell at him. You are a great advertisement for enlightened Christianity ( I just made that term up I think)
I'm sorry Duper but giving the world Jesus does not help much if you are too young or too isolated or mentally handicaped or too ignorant or etc.....to know what the offer means. God still comes off as somewhat cruel to the innocent.
Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:06 pm
I don't believe in god. All I was trying to say was why I don't, and what my reaction would be if I was proven wrong and their was a god given what I see in the world today.Duper has a good point Bettina. You cannot be angry at somthing that you believe does not exist.
Like I said before, I lose either way.
He doesn't exist.......Im dead
He does exist......... I don't want him.
Bettina
Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:27 pm
Ford, Jesus never intended to take pain and suffering away. That is not why he came.
Like I said. Pain is a part of life. It will always be this way. Jesus did say this.
Like I said. Pain is a part of life. It will always be this way. Jesus did say this.
Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:39 pm
I've posted this link before, and I think I'll do it again:
Question...
...how can God allow 'natural' evil to occur?
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/natevl.html
Question...
...how can God allow 'natural' evil to occur?
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/natevl.html
. . .
A VERY important thing to notice here is the assumption underlying this issue--that nothing can happen to us that is not perfectly correlated (somehow, whatever 'correlated' means!!!) with what we have done in life (or 'are') up to that point. This is dubious (at best) and cruel at worst. We have mild analogues from causality and small-scope personal actions, but to extend those to all of life requires a metaphysical leap that renders theistic claims modest by comparison(!). This position would, of course, produce some rather bizarre expectations if it held. Just think about some of these:
* Almost no one could win the $3 million dollar state lottery.
* EVERY flip of a coin would have to go to the most 'virtuous' person(!)
* The good would NEVER die first (or young).
* hospitals would only be full of 'evil' people (and so why fund them, eh?)
* a twin that died one day earlier than another twin, would have to have been 'less good'.
* smashing your thumb with a hammer would be reserved for the more evil...(and accordingly, skill and talent would have been 'deserved')
* earthquakes only hit the evil cities, and ALL 'evil cities' MUST get earthquakes...
* all MINOR illnesses would be 'intelligent'--chickenpox would only infect the 'bad students' and not 'the good students' in a schoolroom (for example)...
* those doing 'evil' acts would never live long enough to 'change their ways' [and so most of us would have died in our adolescence-including ME! ]...
* forgiveness can NEVER occur--the evil would die before that.
The point should be obvious: to insist that we only get 'what we deserve'--immediately is to insist on absurdity and a situation no would could live with.
. . .
Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 10:22 pm
Here's the point that Duper is trying to make: you say you don't believe in God because if He existed He would end all pain. We're telling you that the assumption the God would end all pain if He existed is wrong. You can stay with your answer of you don't want him, but be aware that that's an emotional answer, not a logical one.bet51987 wrote:I don't believe in god. All I was trying to say was why I don't, and what my reaction would be if I was proven wrong and their was a god given what I see in the world today.Duper has a good point Bettina. You cannot be angry at somthing that you believe does not exist.
Like I said before, I lose either way.
He doesn't exist.......Im dead
He does exist......... I don't want him.
Bettina
Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2004 7:15 am
I said that, and yes, there if the sn slowed down it's srinking in times past, it woldn't have outputed nearly as much energy, freezing the earth entirely solid.Drakona wrote: The other thing to watch out for is the assumption that processes have been constant. There was a guy on the DBB about a year ago I think that made an argument about the size of the sun. He quoted an article that said the sun's radius had decreased in size by 0.5% in the last 400 years (or something like that), and concluded that if the old earth view was correct, the sun must have originally been the size of the whole solar system! Stop and think about this for a moment though. Is there any reason to suppose that the sun's radius has to change at a constant rate through all of history? Maybe it grows and shrinks. Or maybe it's the volume that changes, not the radius. Or maybe it grows logarithmically, or exponentially, or some other way than at a constant rate. There are lots of possibilities. Whenever someone wants to use something constant to date by, ask yourself--is there a good reason why that thing should have remained constant through the years?
I'd say that's reason enough.
Besides, where would the sun get extra mass? comets?
And I said it was volume, not just diameter, mass and diameter are usually closely linked.
PS. I havn't seen one good fact for evolution here yet, anone have any?
Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2004 11:22 am
One good fact for evolution: Sexual reproduction strategies persist in animals that can reproduce asexually.
Ghengis: Nice response. Much more than I have the energy for. I'm just throwing rocks
Ghengis: Nice response. Much more than I have the energy for. I'm just throwing rocks
Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2004 11:48 am
Darkside, mass and diameter have absolutely no correlation. Ever hear of something called density? Two items of the same exact volume and shape can have vastly different masses due to the amount of matter in each one. And what do you mean by "extra mass"? Who said anything about the Sun gainging mass? Where do you get this "freezing the Earth" nonsense? How would small fluctuations in the Sun's diameter affect its energy output? Wouldn't fusion still be taking place at the same rate, thus keeping the flow of energy constant?
Finally, getting to the root of the issue, where did you obtain your information about the Sun shrinking? I follow astronomy, and I've never heard of any information about it. Do you have any NASA studies that have proved this? No offense, but I don't think that a fundamentalist Christian source is going to go very far on this board. Even if this fluctuation were true, as Drakona said, there's absolutely no reason to presuppose that the Sun has been constantly changing in size over billions of years. Depending on solar fluctuations, I'd almost expect short-term variations in size to be occurring; this doesn't allow one to make the assumption that such fluctuations happen in one direction and at a constant rate.
Finally, getting to the root of the issue, where did you obtain your information about the Sun shrinking? I follow astronomy, and I've never heard of any information about it. Do you have any NASA studies that have proved this? No offense, but I don't think that a fundamentalist Christian source is going to go very far on this board. Even if this fluctuation were true, as Drakona said, there's absolutely no reason to presuppose that the Sun has been constantly changing in size over billions of years. Depending on solar fluctuations, I'd almost expect short-term variations in size to be occurring; this doesn't allow one to make the assumption that such fluctuations happen in one direction and at a constant rate.
Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2004 12:59 pm
I fail to see how this helps evolution. All animals have cells reproducing asexually inside their own bodies. That's how they stay alive and grow. Also, no known "animals" produce babies asexually. An animal is defined as "A multicellular organism of the kingdom Animalia, differing from plants in certain typical characteristics such as capacity for locomotion, nonphotosynthetic metabolism, pronounced response to stimuli, restricted growth, and fixed bodily structure." Single-celled or extremely simple organisms are the only things that can asexually reproduce. Where then did sexual reproduction come from? Asexual reproduction provides a much more certain way of propagating a particular organism, since the organism doesn't have to find a mate. Therefore, according to the laws of natural selection, asexually reproducing organisms should be the only ones alive today, since they can reproduce without needing another organism of the same type, and thus have a competitive advantage over other organisms. So much for the battle of the sexes.WarAdvocat wrote:One good fact for evolution: Sexual reproduction strategies persist in animals that can reproduce asexually.
Thus, the existence of sexual reproduction, which must come into existence immediately to have any effect whatsoever*, in itself constitutes yet another threat to the evolutionary hypothesis. Keep trying, guys.
*Sexual reproduction requires several working organs in order to function. It also requires two devolvements: male and female. For each of male and female to evolve, and be able to reproduce successfully, requires an incredible amount of genetic information. Think several gigabytes of information on a computer scale. Both male and female had to evolve, and stay alive, and figure out what to do with those weird new organs, in order for sexual reproduction to work. It just doesn't work that way. BOTH male AND female had to evolve, and be able to reproduce, AT THE SAME TIME!
Now I know there are single-celled organisms that reproduce both sexually and asexually. The point is, that in these cells, sexual reproduction simply means that one organism gives the other one a bit of its DNA. It means that a male cell and a female cell don't reproduce as we see animals reproduce. There IS no male and female cell. Scientists have studied, but are unable to comprehend, how two cells figure out which is to receive DNA and which cell is to duplicate and donate DNA. This "sexual reproduction" isn't anything like what animals and humans do today.
In short, I don't know what you're trying to say here. The existence of single-cell organisms that asexually reproduce when they want to propagate and sexually reproduce when they want to get new DNA, but not reproduce, is not evidence for evolution. Rather, it is evidence that these cells have a method of sharing DNA as well as reproducing, adding complexity to an already insanely complex world. If God didn't make this, I don't know who did.
To old-earth creationists:
The more I study the subject, the more I'm being convinced that there is no evidence to take the creation of the earth as 6 literal days. The Hebrew word used for day in this case can also mean "period of time." While I don't think God used macroevolution to create the species, I do think he created two animals of each type, incredibly rich in genes. For instance, I do not think that God created wolves and dogs. I think He created an animal that, if not exactly resembling any of today's animals, was rich enough in genes that it had the ability to devolve into both wolves and dogs. Not evolve, devolve. There's a difference. In evolving, organisms gain information. In devolving, some genes are lost in the reproductive process. Evolutionists, don't get excited.
From the evidence I've seen so far, it appears that old-earth creationism might be correct. I don't know. I'm not going to pretend I do. My views have radically shifted over the past year or so on this topic. There is mountains of evidence for both sides, much of which can be explained away or countered by either side. I don't know enough to take a definitive stance on it at this point.
Also, am I the only one that noticed that Ghengis's post clearly contradicted itself?
Ghengis wrote: I can't even begin to debate you because it's apparent that your understanding of even the most basic scientific concepts approaches nil.
You say I don't understand science or scientific concepts--and then say it would take up too much work to dig up the "science" and "scientific concepts" that you're referring to. If that's science, then no one on earth is a scientist.Ghengis wrote: A serious reply addressing even one of your misconceptions would require so much background information that the entire undertaking is too burdensome to contemplate.
If I'm so unschooled in all facets of scientific evidence, why does it take so much effort to refute "even one of my misconceptions?"
Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2004 6:38 pm
Stryker, I really don't have the time to get into it with you. But having baited me twice since my post, I'll oblige your continuted trolling.
- G
I'm a geologist, I don't need to look up the stuff you post that I find the most perposterous. Just out of curiosity, what do you want to be when you grow up?Stryker wrote:You guys say it is impossible to educate me because I am uneducatable. I think you just don't want to because you'd actually have to look something up
My second statement said that a reply would require excessive backgroud information. This clearly refers to the content of the reply; I don't want to type for an hour. You added the words "dig up" in an attempt to spin my statement. As I mentioned above, I don't need to look this stuff up. I actually understand it.Stryker wrote:Also, am I the only one that noticed that Ghengis's post clearly contradicted itself?
You say I don't understand science or scientific concepts--and then say it would take up too much work to dig up the "science" and "scientific concepts" that you're referring to. If that's science, then no one on earth is a scientist.
If I'm so unschooled in all facets of scientific evidence, why does it take so much effort to refute "even one of my misconceptions?"
- G
Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2004 8:05 pm
Heck, You could go out on a limb and say that god took 6 24 hour periods to create the preconditions which would logically lead to all we know today.
That way science AND creationists can be right
Oh yeah, and then that would mean, if there were a hypothetical god, that he didn't lie to us, which I find appealing.
As for the sexual reproduction issue, like I said, I'm throwing rocks. It's amusing Your bias will fill in the blanks, which is why it's so fun.
That way science AND creationists can be right
Oh yeah, and then that would mean, if there were a hypothetical god, that he didn't lie to us, which I find appealing.
As for the sexual reproduction issue, like I said, I'm throwing rocks. It's amusing
Your bias will fill in the blanks, which is why it's so fun.Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2004 8:39 pm
Stryker you have not refuted anything. All you have done is post a bunch of opinions that you believe to be true but that many of us believe to be nonsense. A fact cannot be proven or refuted in a simple forum post, all you can do is state what you believe and your sources. I cannot sum up a first year university level geology course and 30+ years of casual reading of technical articles in a post that could prove anything to anyone and particularly to a true scientist.
Try reading Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" Mr. Bryson does not offer any scientific proofs in his very readable book but in the significant portion of the book that covers the age of the earth debate you will find the stages of the debate, the very basic concepts of the competing theories, why some were accepted over others, the names of the people who presented them and where you can find some of the papers so you can review them yourself if you want.
If you can find a scientific paper that has been accepted by a peer reviewed periodical that refutes the concept that the age of the earth exceeds 10,000 years please let me know. I will do my best to find an read it.
Try reading Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" Mr. Bryson does not offer any scientific proofs in his very readable book but in the significant portion of the book that covers the age of the earth debate you will find the stages of the debate, the very basic concepts of the competing theories, why some were accepted over others, the names of the people who presented them and where you can find some of the papers so you can review them yourself if you want.
If you can find a scientific paper that has been accepted by a peer reviewed periodical that refutes the concept that the age of the earth exceeds 10,000 years please let me know. I will do my best to find an read it.
Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2004 8:16 am
Ford, from what I can see, Stryker (and possibly some others) have fallen victim to the media, in the form of "ID", which is short for Intelligent Design. ID is creationism wrapped in pseudo-science for the explicit purpose of generating controversy (ahem: "presenting an alternate viewpoint").
Basically, they use scientific-sounding language to make it seem like what they are doing is science. The problem with this is that the masses are easily impressed by the scientific-sounding tone that is presented by the ID people, and all of a sudden it seems like there is a debate going on...when there isn't. There's SPIN DOCTORING and PROPAGANDA, but the only debate going on is in the minds of creationists. Oh, there's a few pretentiously serious publications, but as Drakona mentioned earlier, it's hard to take them seriously when their assumptions are so fundamentally flawed.
The process is simple: First remove all context from the situation. Then add only the context that validates your theory. In other words, they're only right when they can special-case their arguments, and that's just not science...
[Goldmember voice] Isn't dot VIERRRD?? [/Goldmember voice]
Basically, they use scientific-sounding language to make it seem like what they are doing is science. The problem with this is that the masses are easily impressed by the scientific-sounding tone that is presented by the ID people, and all of a sudden it seems like there is a debate going on...when there isn't. There's SPIN DOCTORING and PROPAGANDA, but the only debate going on is in the minds of creationists. Oh, there's a few pretentiously serious publications, but as Drakona mentioned earlier, it's hard to take them seriously when their assumptions are so fundamentally flawed.
The process is simple: First remove all context from the situation. Then add only the context that validates your theory. In other words, they're only right when they can special-case their arguments, and that's just not science...
Just for the record, yes. We call them "Seals" or "Sea Lions". FishDogCats?Stryker wrote:Let's put it this way war. In all your human experience, have you EVER seen ANYTHING even REMOTELY approaching a fishdog?
[Goldmember voice] Isn't dot VIERRRD?? [/Goldmember voice]
Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2004 9:15 am
HHAAAAAAAAHAHAHHAHA!!!!!!! That's a good one. ROFLOL!!!WarAdvocat wrote:Basically, they use scientific-sounding language to make it seem like what they are doing is science. The problem with this is that the masses are easily impressed by the scientific-sounding tone that is presented by the ID people, and all of a sudden it seems like there is a debate going on...when there isn't. There's SPIN DOCTORING and PROPAGANDA, but the only debate going on is in the minds of creationists. Oh, there's a few pretentiously serious publications, but as Drakona mentioned earlier, it's hard to take them seriously when their assumptions are so fundamentally flawed.
Seriously.
You guys haven't produced one shred of evidence that the religion of Evolution is true. Until I see evidence, Evolution is hereby classified as a religious faith. Faith: Definition: "Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence."
Religion: Definition: "A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion."
It's not a matter of bias guys. Face it. We're all biased. I am. You are. It's just a matter of which way we're biased. There's no such thing as "unbiased". An unbiased person would be a person that didn't believe anything. You guys were taught from childhood in the public schools that Christianity is false, and evolution is true.
...You think I'm not being "scientific" enough. Fine. I'll prove to you MATHEMATICALLY the odds of the simplest known protein coming into existence through random processes.
In the simplest known protein there are 124 amino acids of 17 different types. These amino acids are arranged in sequence. If one amino acid in the sequence is in the wrong place or missing, the entire protein is worthless.
Let's assume that all the correct amino acids are in the right spot and forced to join together somehow (considering the molecular complexity of an amino acid, that's basically impossible, but I'll ignore that for now).
We start with the first amino acid in the protein. There are 17 different amino acids in the chain. Therefore, there is a 1/17 chance that it will be the correct amino acid. Let's take a look at that. The odds are a little less than that of a coin flip coming up heads 4 times in a row. Not too bad, eh?
For the second amino acid, you take that 1/17 chance and multiply it by 1/17 again. You get 1/289. Suddenly those odds aren't that great. Remember, we just finished the second amino acid out of 124.
For the third amino acid, you multiply it by 1/17 again. The odds are now 1/4913. Ouch. those odds are considerably less than the odds of someone flipping heads 12 times in a row on a coin.
For the fourth amino acid out of 124, multiply by 1/17 again. The result is 1/83521. Are you getting the idea yet?
The limit of mathematical impossibility is 100,000,000,000,000,000,000.
The odds of the single simplest protein we know of occurring by chance are less than 1/100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Got the idea yet?
As for the fish-dog, get real. The bone structures of dogs and seals are very, VERY different.
Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2004 9:54 am
<scoff> You got what you asked for and now you're trying to weasel out of it eh?? Phylogenically, seals are more FishBEARS, but the point is still valid.Stryker wrote:Let's put it this way war. In all your human experience, have you EVER seen ANYTHING even REMOTELY approaching a fishdog?
As for the rest of your foolishness:
Just a little bit of googling turned up a class of proteins called "Octapeptides"...Yep. Proteins made up of a mere 8 amino acids. Golly gee, if we operated from your assumptions, I do believe LIFE ITSELF would be UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE!!!
Thank god we don't.
Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2004 9:58 am
A quick google search for "octapeptides" reveals that it's a indigestible, useless piece of a protein found in rat poop. Your point is?
I guess I should have clarified: the smallest protein usable by a cell.
Also, an octapeptide is any series of 8 amino acids, regardless of whether it constitutes a protein or not. So much for that idea.
Octapeptide: Definition: "A protein fragment or molecule (as oxytocin or vasopressin) that consists of eight amino acids linked in a polypeptide chain."
Life isn't impossible. Life without a creator is.
BTW, there are also:
pentapeptides
decapeptides
and just about every other latin number word + peptide combined into a word.
None of them constitute viable, useful proteins.
BTW2: I'm not trying to weasel out of it. I'm showing you that your "evidence" isn't really evidence.
Heh, just as a sidenote, the chances of an octapeptide coming into being are 1/16,800,000.
I guess I should have clarified: the smallest protein usable by a cell.
Also, an octapeptide is any series of 8 amino acids, regardless of whether it constitutes a protein or not. So much for that idea.
Octapeptide: Definition: "A protein fragment or molecule (as oxytocin or vasopressin) that consists of eight amino acids linked in a polypeptide chain."
Life isn't impossible. Life without a creator is.
BTW, there are also:
pentapeptides
decapeptides
and just about every other latin number word + peptide combined into a word.
None of them constitute viable, useful proteins.
BTW2: I'm not trying to weasel out of it. I'm showing you that your "evidence" isn't really evidence.
Heh, just as a sidenote, the chances of an octapeptide coming into being are 1/16,800,000.
Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2004 10:22 am
Actually, you should have QUALIFIED: "The smallest protein I care to discuss because it makes me sound rightStryker wrote:I guess I should have clarified: the smallest protein usable by a cell.
" And let's not discuss catalyzing conditions in the primordial soup. Let's just isolate the one factor that you want to discuss.Oh, and please provide your sources on this assertion of yours. And what type of cell uses this smallest protein? Animal? Vegetable? Bacterial? Fungal?
No, not to today's organisms. I betcha primitive organisms had a use for them until they found better proteins to useStryker wrote:BTW, there are also:
pentapeptides
decapeptides
and just about every other latin number word + peptide combined into a word.
None of them constitute viable, useful proteins.
Remember, we're talking about evolution here. The primary assumption is that life started simple and EVOLVED.PS: Yes you are trying to weasel out. A seal IS INDEED "remotely" similar to a fishdog. Concede the point like an adult.
Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2004 10:52 am
Look at the bone structure like an adult. It ain't similar. If you look at the muscle structure, it's even more different.
As for those numbers, I used a calculator. The simplest protein of life, which I used, is ribonuclease.
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~rjh9u/I ... ure05.html
This link is from a Virginian educational site. It says that polypeptide structures, one or more of which compose a protein, range from 100 to 10,000 amino acids in size.
BTW, all cells use ribonuclease in some form or another.
http://www.iscid.org/encyclopedia/Ribonuclease
For those who don't know what ubiquitous means: "Being or seeming to be everywhere at the same time; omnipresent"
As for those numbers, I used a calculator. The simplest protein of life, which I used, is ribonuclease.
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~rjh9u/I ... ure05.html
This link is from a Virginian educational site. It says that polypeptide structures, one or more of which compose a protein, range from 100 to 10,000 amino acids in size.
BTW, all cells use ribonuclease in some form or another.
http://www.iscid.org/encyclopedia/Ribonuclease
For those who don't know what ubiquitous means: "Being or seeming to be everywhere at the same time; omnipresent"
Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2004 11:21 am
Looks like a dog
Barks like a dog
Swims
Has fins/flippers
----------------
=remotely similar to a FishDog
End of conversation.
You're more focused on being right than discussion.
<yawn>
Go make up reasons why you are right alone. I don't concede. I secede.
Buh bye.
Barks like a dog
Swims
Has fins/flippers
----------------
=remotely similar to a FishDog
End of conversation.
You're more focused on being right than discussion.
<yawn>
Go make up reasons why you are right alone. I don't concede. I secede.
Buh bye.
Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2004 11:32 am
barks like dog: so do squirrels.
has flippers: so do all sea creatures.
dogs swim.
cats look somewhat like dogs.
On the other hand:
Fish are cold-blooded. Seals are warm-blooded.
Dogs have toes. Seals don't. They have multiple long bone structures with muscles and joints like human fingers to move their flippers.
Seals have a flipper that is neither similar to dog tails nor fish tails.
Saying "Meh I'm not even gonna try" doesn't advance your points any.
has flippers: so do all sea creatures.
dogs swim.
cats look somewhat like dogs.
On the other hand:
Fish are cold-blooded. Seals are warm-blooded.
Dogs have toes. Seals don't. They have multiple long bone structures with muscles and joints like human fingers to move their flippers.
Seals have a flipper that is neither similar to dog tails nor fish tails.
Saying "Meh I'm not even gonna try" doesn't advance your points any.