The Creation vs Evolution debate thread...

[CaptainHaplo]

Ok - some ground rules.

#1 - This is a DEBATE. Calling people names or throwing out insults because someone disagrees with you is not a debate. If you cannot contribute maturely, don't post.

#2 - Nothing said here should be taken personally. Educated people disagree all the time, without having their feelings hurt.

#3 - Debate means your backing up your viewpoints with logical reasoning and where available, reasonably respectable sources. Anyone can claim the moon is made of green cheese.

#4 - On the subject of sources, since this is going to include religious issues, its only fair that both religious and "anti" religious (debunking) sources may both be used.

#5 - It is up to each poster (and hopefully readers) to review the available material and keep a somewhat open mind in this discussion, so that both sides may learn a bit and grow.

#6 - Anyone with a willingness to add CONSTRUCTIVELY to the debate, on either side, is welcome to join in.

If you can't abide by these rules, then do everyone a favor and go find another thread to hang out in. There are some mature and smart people here that can actually have a discussion. In other words, Trolls are unwelcome.

With that said, I will make another post to get the debate started.

[CaptainHaplo]

I will be presenting the side of scientific creationism. This means that I will bring forward evidence of a "young" earth, rebut as best I can challenges to such evidence with logic and fact, as well as demonstrate how evolution is a flawed theory lacking credible evidence.

How old is the earth? No one was alive to see its beginning, so there is no direct testamony to that beginning. However, a "Young Earth" - aka a planetary age somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years old is demonstrated by a number of scientific facts.

#1 Let us look to the sky in the night and see our celestial neighbor - the Moon. The gravitational pull between the Earth and Moon causes the Earth’s oceans to have tides. The tidal friction between the Earth’s terrestrial surface and the water moving over it causes energy to be added to the Moon. This results in a constant yearly increase in the distance between the Earth and Moon. This tidal friction also causes the Earth’s rotation to slow down, but more importantly, the energy added to the Moon causes it to recede from the Earth. The rate of recession was measured at four centimeters per year in 1981, however, according to Physicist Donald B. DeYoung:
"One cannot extrapolate the present 4 cm/year separation rate back into history. It has that value today, but was more rapid in the past because of tidal effects. In fact, the separation rate depends on the distance to the 6th power, a very strong dependence ... the rate ... was perhaps 20 m/year ‘long’ ago, and the average is 1.2 m/year.
Because of this, the Moon must be less than 750 million years old -- or 20% of the supposed 4.5 billion-year age of the Earth-Moon system theorized by evolution.

#2 Oil Wells - When oil wells are drilled, the oil is almost always found to be under great pressure. This presents a problem for those who claim "millions of years" for the age of oil, simply because rocks are porous. In other words, as time goes by the oil should seep into tiny pores in the surrounding rock, and, over time, reduce the pressure. However, for some reason it doesn't.

#3 Our Friend the Sun - Measurements of the sun's diameter over the past several hundred years indicate that it is shrinking at the rate of five feet per hour. Assuming that this rate has been constant in the past we can conclude that the earth would have been so hot only one million years ago that no life could have survived. And only 11,200,000 years ago the sun would have physically touched the earth.

#4 The Air We Breathe - Carbon-14 is produced when radiation from the sun strikes Nitrogen-14 atoms in the earth's upper atmosphere. The earth's atmosphere is not yet saturated with C14. This means that the amount of C14 being produced is greater than the amount that is decaying back to N14. It is estimated that a state of equilibrium would be reached in as little as 30,000 years. Thus, it appears that the earth's atmosphere is less than 30,000 years old. In fact, the evidence suggests it is less than 10,000 years old.

#5 "Mother" Eve's DNA - In 1989 scientists said that they had compared the Mitochondrial DNA of various different races of people and concluded that they all came from a single woman (they called her Eve) who lived from 100,000-200,000 years ago.This story was widely reported in the press. A few years later scientists actually measured the rate of Mitochondrial mutations and discovered that they changed about 20 times faster than was earlier reported. This means that "Eve" did not live 100,000-200,000 years ago but rather only 5,000-10,000.

#6 Look at all the People - Today the earth's population doubles about every 50 years. If we assumed only half of the current growth rate and start with one couple, it would take less than 4,000 years to achieve today's population.

#7 The Dead Sea - The Dead Sea is in Israel. It is receives fresh water from the Sea of Galilee via the Jordan River. The Dead Sea has a very high salt content. Even so, it continues to get saltier since it has no outlet other than by evaporation. Scientists have measured the amount of salt added each year by the Jordan River; and they have also calculated the amount of salt in the Dead Sea. From these it is possible to estimate how long this process has been going on for. Assuming a constant rate of salt/water flow, and a zero salt level at the beginning, then the age of the Dead Sea is only 13,000 year old.

Additional detail and sources regarding these evidences along with others may be researched at the following links:

http://www.earthage.org/youngearthev/evidence_for_a_young_earth.htm (http://www.earthage.org/youngearthev/evidence_for_a_young_earth.htm)
http://www.trueorigin.org/mitochondrialeve01.asp (http://www.trueorigin.org/mitochondrialeve01.asp)

[Tribesman]

Creationism relies on a literal interpretaion of the bible about the nature of the planet and a solid belief that it is infallible.
Since it is very easy to show the bible is wrong then creationism makes no sense......end of topic.

[Skybird]

A hallucination and fictional writing wanting to be compared to scientific methodology and work processes and their resulting conclusions - as if Tolkien's fantasy and imagination could be compared to the theories of Einstein or Darwin.

:dead:

Tolkien's narration of how the world was created, as to be found in the first chapter of The Silmarillion, "Ainulindale", is a very beautiful and poetic piece of narration arts, and probably the most beautiful text of it's kind that I know of. But it is a fantasy, no scientific theory. It would not make sense to compare it to scienctific theories, since it fails to qualify as a scientific work result from the very beginning on.

Nuff said.

[nikimcbee]

The funny thing I think about this debate that if you dig deep enough, both sides come down to "faith". The science term for faith is a theory.
Here's the oh-ffical mcbee policy on the subject.

The purpose of religion is to prepare you for the afterlife. So, I say follow your teachings, live a good life, and the rest will work itself out. So I say it doesn't really matter how old the earth is or where man/life came from in the end; the bottom line is, were you a good person?

I think both extreames are to bent on that they are right and the other is wrong:doh:. I'd say there's a lot of truth to both sides of the argument.

I really don't get that worked up about the topic, but I do find it really funny to watch both sides fall all over themsevles to prove the other is wrong.:haha:

[Reece]

Well I personally find it more believable that the world was created, rather than the whole thing being just a fluke!!:yep: But that is my opinion.:DL

[Shearwater]

Alright now, I've been waiting for this for some while. Thanks CapHap for starting a thread on this topic :up:

To make a start:
One thing that seems to bother me is the conception some people seem to hold that evolutionists (just a label for the sake of convenience; I count myself as one of them) seem to 'believe' in evolution, while creationists seem to 'believe' in, well, creation by God as told in the Bible.
While I'm comfortable with the latter, the first conception is simply not true. Almost every evolutionists I know doesn't believe in the Theory of Evolution. It is simply a theory, amongst many, many others, which seems to offer the most plausible explanation of how different species have evolved over the course of time. Thus, the quality of belief, if you will, is a wholly different one that that of religion. We think it's the most probable - if a theory comes along that explains things in a better and more plausible way along with sufficient evidence, I'm perfectly willing to accept a new theory, and if something better than that theory is formulated, I will proceed likewise. Theories change with evidence and evolve over time, and I'm sure as time goes by, the current Theory of Evolution will witness some refinements or alterations in important aspects. The Theory of Evolution is not, nor was it ever intended, to be a substitute for religion (and if it were, it would have but one single creed as its whole content). It is rather a chapter far from being closed.
Creationism, on the other hand, is based on the Bible, which has been canonized almost two millenia ago and hasn't changed much over the course of time, except from translations and interpretations (though of course, the former always includes the latter to some extent). These interpretations however are the very things that make all the difference.
Speaking as a student of linguistics, the whole area of hermeneutics has caught my interest long ago. To put it simply, there are no positive terms in language, by which I mean that no word has a meaning in itself, but always and only in opposition to other words. Derrida goes a step further and says that even this relative, contextual meaning cannot ever be pinpointed but remains elusive (for which concept he coined the word 'différance', here (http://www.stanford.edu/class/history34q/readings/Derrida/Differance.html) is a link for anyone interested, but beware, it's a fairly long read). To me it makes it very plausible that we simply cannot interpret the Bible, or any text for that matter, in a literal way.
The question is now: But why should we interpret the Bible in the first place?
The answer is: The meaning of every text is only established via an interaction with the reader. People don't simply read the Bible, they draw conclusions from it. But in order to draw conclusions from a text, you must have questions to the text in the first place which you seek to see answered by it. It again relates to the whole concept of hermeneutics - different people have a different background and ask different questions, and therefore cannot but understand a text in ways different from each other. Of course, this does not mean that every person's reading of the Bible is so vastly different from any other person's that it can no longer be communicated. In fact, most people have similar views, and in the field of religion, this is what some might call 'mainstream religion' or orthodoxy (as denoted by the word kat-holos as in Catholic, meaning 'that which is at the basis of everything'). But the watchword here is 'similar', not 'identical', and even one's own interpretation changes over the course of time.

I do not deride creationists as being stupid, ignorant or simple minded, and I resent evolutionists who do so (Hello Condello). It's especially a problem because it sometimes seems to reduce a person that often have immensely complex and sophisticated ideas to one single concept - "You're a creationist."
Needless to say, I can have issues with all sorts of people. That is the case whenever someone holds a certain belief (in a very broad sense and not restricted to religion) in an unreflected, simplistic way and does not allow the other person to justify him or herself. Closed-mindedness, in one word.

Religious belief always requires a 'leap of faith', and that leap always requires an individual choice. And as long as that that person does not try to impose their views onto my own, it needs to be respected.

[Onkel Neal]

The funny thing I think about this debate that if you dig deep enough, both sides come down to "faith". The science term for faith is a theory.



Well said!! :yeah: It all comes down to what one believes in.

List me under the evolution column. And I see no reason why God could not have created the world and that's the process he employed. That's what I believe.

[Platapus]

Well said!! :yeah: It all comes down to what one believes in.

List me under the evolution column. And I see no reason why God could not have created the world and that's the process he employed. That's what I believe.

I have seen bumper stickers stating that people believe in the Big Bang theory - god decided to create the Universe and Bang, it was done. :)

You do bring up a good point. Is it a valid assumption that creation theories and evolution theories are mutually exclusive? Has this been demonstrated?

[Skybird]

Well said!! :yeah: It all comes down to what one believes in.

List me under the evolution column. And I see no reason why God could not have created the world and that's the process he employed. That's what I believe.

A scientific theory - different to popular assumption - does not claim to hold the ultimate truth (maybe some irresponsble scientists do that, but the serious ones do not object to that a scientific theory is no absolute, but a relative, a tempoarry, always chnaging thing), but claims to be the best explanation for obervations made that we so far can come up with. It gets checked constantly and gets verified or abandoned or changed. In this meaning, there is no believing in scientific theories. they are no beliefes, but logical conclusions on the basis of documented observations. They differ where the data basis on observations differ. Just claims being made - are no valid observations.

religious claims are not object of examination, they never have been, they do not want to be, and they even cannot be. They are just this: claims. And just claiming you can whatever you want. You either believe these claims, or you don't.

Scientific theories describe a relative perspective of temporary validity.
Religious claims pretend to be absolute.

Science is a constant process.
Religion is a frozen (pretended) end-status.

Science asks questions.
Religion claims to know all answers without ever needing to ask questions. It even declares asking questions a sin and heresy. You should not want to know, you should just beolieve - the dogma of the religion, that is.

Just believing you can whatever you want, nobody must care as long as you keep it private. In religion, if you blindly believe the right things you are virtuous. In science, you have to work for evidence. If you do not, you are not serious.

[AngusJS]

How old is the earth? Much older than 10,000 years.

http://www.youtube.com/user/potholer54#p/c/DB23537556D7AADB/5/w5369-OobM4

[Thomen]

Scientific theories describe a relative perspective of temporary validity.
Religious claims pretend to be absolute.

Science is a constant process.
Religion is a frozen (pretended) end-status.

Science asks questions.
Religion claims to know all answers without ever needing to ask questions. It even declares asking questions a sin and heresy. You should not want to know, you should just beolieve - the dogma of the religion, that is.

Just believing you can whatever you want, nobody must care as long as you keep it private. In religion, if you blindly believe the right things you are virtuous. In science, you have to work for evidence. If you do not, you are not serious.

Sounds very much like a religious dogma to me. You put your faith into science and count or rather hope they are correct. Other put their faith in a book, in a scroll or verbal transmitted legends, or history. Button line is, it makes no difference. It is all about faith or believe in one system or construct or another.

Oh, and just for the record: You might want to fact check your first sentence. It is the popular believe that it is in constant motion and non rigid. Unfortunately that is not always true. Especially heavy contested theories can be extremely rigid and outright hostile towards opponents, see Global Warming debate, or rather non debate for examples. The theory of creationism is another example of outright hostility and close mindedness, the same attributes that are slapped on religious believers, by the way.
Nice hypocrisy you got there..

[Sailor Steve]

#1 Let us look to the sky in the night and see our celestial neighbor - the Moon...Because of this, the Moon must be less than 750 million years old -- or 20% of the supposed 4.5 billion-year age of the Earth-Moon system theorized by evolution.
And 1,000,000% of the time claimed by Creationists.

#2 Oil Wells - When oil wells are drilled, the oil is almost always found to be under great pressure. This presents a problem for those who claim "millions of years" for the age of oil, simply because rocks are porous. In other words, as time goes by the oil should seep into tiny pores in the surrounding rock, and, over time, reduce the pressure. However, for some reason it doesn't.
But the same is true if the claim is only "thousands of years".

#3 Our Friend the Sun - Measurements of the sun's diameter over the past several hundred years indicate that it is shrinking at the rate of five feet per hour. Assuming that this rate has been constant in the past we can conclude that the earth would have been so hot only one million years ago that no life could have survived. And only 11,200,000 years ago the sun would have physically touched the earth.
Can you show the actual studies involving the rate of change? And whether the change is assumed to have always been constant?

#4 The Air We Breathe - Carbon-14 is produced when radiation from the sun strikes Nitrogen-14 atoms in the earth's upper atmosphere. The earth's atmosphere is not yet saturated with C14. This means that the amount of C14 being produced is greater than the amount that is decaying back to N14. It is estimated that a state of equilibrium would be reached in as little as 30,000 years. Thus, it appears that the earth's atmosphere is less than 30,000 years old. In fact, the evidence suggests it is less than 10,000 years old.
The problem there is that Creation supporters also claim that C-14 dating is not valid, at least when applied to the age of fossils. Can you have it both ways?

#5 "Mother" Eve's DNA - In 1989 scientists said that they had compared the Mitochondrial DNA of various different races of people and concluded that they all came from a single woman (they called her Eve) who lived from 100,000-200,000 years ago.This story was widely reported in the press. A few years later scientists actually measured the rate of Mitochondrial mutations and discovered that they changed about 20 times faster than was earlier reported. This means that "Eve" did not live 100,000-200,000 years ago but rather only 5,000-10,000.
But existing hominid remains are estimated to be at least that old.

#6 Look at all the People - Today the earth's population doubles about every 50 years. If we assumed only half of the current growth rate and start with one couple, it would take less than 4,000 years to achieve today's population.
The growth rate is hardly static. It has been increasing steadily as well. It may have doubled in the last 50 years, and the 50 years before that, but the increase was much smaller between 1850 and 1900, and decreases the further back we go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

#7 The Dead Sea - The Dead Sea is in Israel. It is receives fresh water from the Sea of Galilee via the Jordan River. The Dead Sea has a very high salt content. Even so, it continues to get saltier since it has no outlet other than by evaporation. Scientists have measured the amount of salt added each year by the Jordan River; and they have also calculated the amount of salt in the Dead Sea. From these it is possible to estimate how long this process has been going on for. Assuming a constant rate of salt/water flow, and a zero salt level at the beginning, then the age of the Dead Sea is only 13,000 year old.
And the Great Salt Lake, where I live, was a freshwater inland sea until the wall collapsed dumping Lake Bonneville into the Pacific Ocean. Best estimates indicate that happened at least 100,000 years ago.

The problem isn't really with competing scientific theories, because Creationists disallow any testing of their 'theories'. Scientists admit that any theory can have flaws, and good ones welcome challenges and change. Creationists are bent only on proving that they are right, and refuse to examine any evidence to the contrary.

And I am neither. I just judge the arguments on their merits.

[Platapus]

One could also use the nuclear decay at the Oklo natural reactor area as the evidence indicates that was active about 2 billion years ago.

[August]

Well said!! :yeah: It all comes down to what one believes in.

List me under the evolution column. And I see no reason why God could not have created the world and that's the process he employed. That's what I believe.

That's pretty much my viewpoint as well. I'd alo add that man comprehends Gods works and indeed God himself about as well as a 2 year old comprehends the legal implications of quantum physics so anyone who claims they have it all figured out is deluding themselves.

[onelifecrisis]

OMFG, creationism? It had to be you, Haplo.

I think we need a thread where we can debate the rules of this thread. :88)

This reminds of the last time I was in the US and I saw Knowing (Nicolas Cage movie) on the TV.
/FACEPALM

Okay teenager mode is over. I'm not religious but Neal's pov seems sound to me. So yeah, what he said.

[AngusJS]

Because of this, the Moon must be less than 750 million years old -- or 20% of the supposed 4.5 billion-year age of the Earth-Moon system theorized by evolution.Huh, I didn't know that the theory explaining change in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next addressed the formation of the Moon.

[onelifecrisis]

Argh! I want to walk away from this thread but I... just... can't...

Failing that I want to construct a rational argument but.... FFS.... how can one be expected to be rational against such... such... UGHHH!!! :damn:

[August]

Argh! I want to walk away from this thread but I... just... can't...

Failing that I want to construct a rational argument but.... FFS.... how can one be expected to be rational against such... such... UGHHH!!! :damn:

Write a detailed reply at least 5 paragraphs in length stating your position and the flaws in the position of those you disagree with, liberally spicing it up with some witty scarcasm, then instead of hitting submit reply, hit the back button and go for a walk in the sunshine.

[onelifecrisis]

Write a detailed reply at least 5 paragraphs in length stating your position and the flaws in the position of those you disagree with, liberally spicing it up with some witty scarcasm, then instead of hitting submit reply, hit the back button and go for a walk in the sunshine.

:hmmm:

Okay, maybe I will, as long as it's 4.5 billion-year-old sunshine.

[Aramike]

Because of this, the Moon must be less than 750 million years old -- or 20% of the supposed 4.5 billion-year age of the Earth-Moon system theorized by evolution.Besides that such math is based purely upon a singular rate of change, wheras we KNOW that there's be variable speeds, I must correct one other glaring issue in your argument.

The age of the Earth and moon is not speculated on by the theories of evolution - it has far more to do with geology.

[August]

:hmmm:

Okay, maybe I will, as long as it's 4.5 billion-year-old sunshine.

Touche! :D

[Aramike]

Okay, now I have to dig in.#2 Oil Wells - When oil wells are drilled, the oil is almost always found to be under great pressure. This presents a problem for those who claim "millions of years" for the age of oil, simply because rocks are porous. In other words, as time goes by the oil should seep into tiny pores in the surrounding rock, and, over time, reduce the pressure. However, for some reason it doesn't.Wine corks are far more porous than rocks, and my collection of wines aren't leaking. Or even champaign for that matter, which involves a bottle under pressure.

How porous something is has nothing to do with whether or not it can create a seal. The equation involves DENSITY.#3 Our Friend the Sun - Measurements of the sun's diameter over the past several hundred years indicate that it is shrinking at the rate of five feet per hour. Assuming that this rate has been constant in the past we can conclude that the earth would have been so hot only one million years ago that no life could have survived. And only 11,200,000 years ago the sun would have physically touched the earth.I used italics, bold, and underline to demonstrate the HUGE flaw in your argument.

There's no reason to assume that. In fact, when gravity first began the process of fusion, the matter which comprises the sun would have had to shrink FAR MORE RAPIDLY than that in order to because the process.

Furthermore, you mention measurements of the sun's diameter over the course of several hundred years. Accurate measurements of the sun's diameter have really only been available for less than a century.

In any case, that "shrinking sun" argument has been proven to be patently false. The sun is indeed losing mass - but that has not led to any effect of the actual diameter of the sun shrinking. In fact, astronomers have known for years that the sun actually increases in size occassionally.

http://www.tim-thompson.com/resp8.html
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-earth/specific_arguments/sun_shrinking.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Observation_and_effects
#4 The Air We Breathe - Carbon-14 is produced when radiation from the sun strikes Nitrogen-14 atoms in the earth's upper atmosphere. The earth's atmosphere is not yet saturated with C14. This means that the amount of C14 being produced is greater than the amount that is decaying back to N14. It is estimated that a state of equilibrium would be reached in as little as 30,000 years. Thus, it appears that the earth's atmosphere is less than 30,000 years old. In fact, the evidence suggests it is less than 10,000 years old.What evidence? What's the math and science behind this?#5 "Mother" Eve's DNA - In 1989 scientists said that they had compared the Mitochondrial DNA of various different races of people and concluded that they all came from a single woman (they called her Eve) who lived from 100,000-200,000 years ago.This story was widely reported in the press. A few years later scientists actually measured the rate of Mitochondrial mutations and discovered that they changed about 20 times faster than was earlier reported. This means that "Eve" did not live 100,000-200,000 years ago but rather only 5,000-10,000.That is incorrect.

The problem with that argument is that the people postulated it are attempting to combine the logic of the mathematics which have created the concept of mitochondrial eve with mathematics that would complete invalidate the concept entirely. Meaning, if they prove the current estimate of the age of "Eve" wrong, they ALSO prove THEIR estimate wrong.

Ultimately, the science you're proposing is flawed for that same reason. It is content to use current scientific axioms - until it simply decides that those axioms are incorrect.

That is a highly flawed approach.

[Stealth Hunter]

I'd alo add that man comprehends Gods works and indeed God himself about as well as a 2 year old comprehends the legal implications of quantum physics so anyone who claims they have it all figured out is deluding themselves.

This is, of course, assuming that there is in fact a conscious god in existence who does indeed bother with the universe in the first place. And a supreme being can in fact be refuted. To explain how god cannot exist, however, let's get one thing straight: if Person A believes in a god, and if Person B does not, neither of them are required to justify and/or substantiate their beliefs so long as neither one states their belief as fact and asserts its validity. You assert your validity, I assert mine. So I'll provide my line of thinking for my conclusion.

If an entity is composed of qualities, which are contradictory, then that entity cannot exist. To elaborate upon this, I'll use a scenario. Imagine that you enter a foreign room, where there is a message stating that somewhere inside of the room there is a cube. Then it asks you what this cube contains. This is a futile question. The cube itself may be large or small. It may be a vacuum chamber with nothing but spacial bits of gas inside. It may contain any one of trillions of objects or varieties thereof- such as a picture of a donkey, or a toy boat. Etc. You could never, because of this, give a precise and justifiable answer (this is a key point to understand; I strongly emphasize the justifiable part as well).

If you were asked, however, what does the cube NOT contain, then you could give many precise and justifiable answers. For instance, the cube could not contain the solar system, the 18th century, the Amazon River- or absurd objects that are contradictory such as a bed made of sleep or gold made from iron. There are more justifiable answers you could give to this question than the first one, because of an interesting way a-symmetry works in this scenario with the cube.

It is true that there are countless possibilities and countless impossibilities you could give as answers to either question. Despite this, there exists no evidence given from the cube itself, so we can only justifiably comment on the impossibilities but not the possibilities.

Sure, a person could claim that it contained a stainless-steel spoon and nothing else inside and be right. But since this is being said without evidence, there exists no valid justification. Ergo, there is no reason to accept this claim.

So suppose there exists a realm of existence outside of our universe, like the cube. Because our realm that we exist in contains the natural, the other realm must contain the supernatural- which must transcend our realm of existence in all ways. Vis a vis, it is inaccessible to all things here- including us. This draws questions to mind: would things be different here? Could we deduce what occupied this realm, such as a god/divine being?

No. The same a-symmetry principle as before comes into play here again. Countless possible things/beings could exist independent of our universe. Countless logically impossible things/beings cannot. But while we can list many kinds of things/beings that cannot exist independent of us in the other realm because of contradictory logic (i.e. an omniscient being capable of choice; or a non-spacial omnipresent being), we cannot list the things that DO exist independent of us in the other realm with certainty. Therefore, it is unknowable. So any attempt to argue that a specific divine being of any kind exists in an inaccessible realm of reality is an attempt to argue for either the impossible or the unknowable.

Logic alone CAN refute impossible beings, but it can't show that actual possible beings exist without evidence. So reason dictates that there exists no coherent reason to be an agnostic- because you are taking the side of the unknowable and that which does not exist as far as we're concerned- because there is an astonishing lack of evidence for that view. Do you see where I'm going with this? There exists, for example, a contradiction between a omniscience and free will. Thus, while any generic sort of god may exist, any omniscient god who has anything to do with free will cannot. And this can refute almost all of the gods that exist in mainstream religions' belief systems- including the Christian, Islamic, and Jewish gods to name a few of the bigger ones, because they are said to be omniscient but have given us and have some measure of free will. So long as people keep claiming that there is a god and assign certain qualities to them, it is possible to refute them.

[MothBalls]

Just say God created evolution and everyone will be happy.

[Stealth Hunter]

This thread will inevitably lead to confusingly mixing in the origin of life. So before it gets that far, let's all at least begin by recognizing that evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life. That's more deeply rooted inside of things like biogenesis and abiogenesis. Summarizing how scientific discoveries have revealed how we got here today and where it all came from, let me put it like this: After the Big Bang, the universe consisted of mostly free energy released from a near singularity, if not a total singularity. This thing had held the combined energy of the universe today inside of it in a form that is incredibly difficult to understand and that we're just beginning to discover due to titanic and mind-boggling mathematical postulations with modern general relativity and quantum mechanics, physics, and the lot.

This free-floating quantum energy, riding on a tidal wave of expanding space-time fabric, took tens of millions of years- that is for this energy to condense into the first fundamental particles, like leptons, quarks, up-downs, which are all beyond sub-atomic particles in complexity and in minuscule size. With that said, these same sub-atomic particles (protons, neutrons, and electrons) were formed from these things. From these components, eventually, atoms would be born when atoms begin assimilating.

The simplest, easiest combination of these particles is an atom of hydrogen. Hydrogen has three isotopes: one with an atomic mass of one due to a lack of a neutron, one with a mass of two because it has a neutron (deuterium), and one with an atomic mass of three due to it's two neutrons (tritium, which is incredibly rare). This element was, is, and will likely continue to be until the end of all time (the death of the universe, that is). Really, it is the most common stuff in the universe, but it's because of it being so rare that it's often left out of the other gases like hydrogen, helium, etc. in universal quantity.

Eventually, gravity started taking hold of large amounts of hydrogen and brought them together in precelestial bodies- essentially massive clouds of gas. Friction and pressure combined to formulate and ignite the first stars. The first stars burned purely on hydrogen, with sizes, lifespans, and brightness levels varying based on their size/mass. We know this because of imaging NASA has done with microwaves that can go as far back as to when the universe was just a little over 365,000 years old (or thereabouts, I forget the exact number).

Anyway, stars are the birthplace of higher elements. It is in them where fusion takes place; basically, take two atomic nuclei, mass them together, you get a new element and some energy- a process far more efficient than fission once it's started. The first hydrogen atoms inside of stars would smash together to form the element we know as helium. This helium could then combine to form higher elements, like carbon, nitrogen, etc. (basically all the elements we have around us today, and elsewhere in the universe).

It is within carbon that the building block of all organic life is found (known organic life anyway; silicon organisms could theoretically exist elsewhere in the cosmos, if they don't already somewhere here in our own solar system).

Speaking at an elementary level, it took the death of the first stars for their matter to be sprayed across the universe, eventually coalescing into planets and other spacial bodies (like comets, asteroids, moons, etc). Eventually though, this organic matter finds itself where it can be used for the development of life, especially when combined with other materials like nitrogen, oxygen, etc.

From all the stuff scientists and enthusiasts of science have gathered over the decades, the date of the first life forms comes to be around 4Ga, with a margin of error of only 100,000 years. Simple nucleotides formed amino acids, and amino acids are the basis of life as we know it. This is known as the Primordial Soup Theory, and it is very viable (read up on the Miller and Urey Experiment's success in confirming that it was possible for life or at least early forms of life to assimilate from organic matter that was not already a form of life). Over the eons, life developed and became more and more complex due to changing factors within the environment, a need to compete with other species, etc. (this is an incredibly simplified rundown of the Theory of Evolution). And with it becoming more and more complex, there came about differences in allele levels inside of organisms (this is evolution, and this has been observed many times by geneticists and biologists alike).

[onelifecrisis]

I once saw a really cool video which explained the big bang. I sat down to watch it and was presented with some computer animation (the informative type, not the flashy type) showing what happened. This was voiced-over by a calm female narrator who explained that I was seeing the first few nanoseconds of the universe. These squiggly things came out of the singularity, they wobbled for a nanosecond, then changed into long wavy lines, then into balls and more squiggles and all sorts of stuff. As this was happening there was a timer in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen showing the time. It had started at zero and was incrementing in millionths of a second or something like that. In the first microsecond of the universe a whole ****load of stuff happened. It was all quite fascinating and it took a few minutes for her to explain it all.

So there I was, 0.001 seconds (or whatever) after the big bang, and the universe was looking a bit like minestrone soup. The narrator explained that the soup was rapidly expanding and cooling. I waited to see what would happen next. I was thinking: at this rate, this could be a long video. The narrator then calmly stated:

"The expansion and cooling continued in this way, with no real change in composition, for about three hundred thousand years."

The clock in the bottom right corner of the screen updated accordingly, and for some reason I found this hysterically funny. I laughed so hard that I nearly fell off my chair. I turned the video off, and to this day I have no idea how that soup ended up writing piffle on the internet.

[Tribesman]

#1 Let us look to the sky in the night and see our celestial neighbor
It isn't our celestial neighbour, it is a light that the creator placed in the bowl that covers the earth.
I do like that site you took your points from though....
8. Direct Dating of Dragon Bones:
By evolutionary reasoning, dragon bones only occur in the so-called Cretaceous, Jurassic, or Triassic eras.

[onelifecrisis]

A serious contribution:

For me, the key word in the name 'Big Bang Theory' is theory. It's a guess. It could be right or wrong. It doesn't matter to me. What matters is that the guess is based on knowledge and reason. Some people have observed what they can and extrapolated from those observations and said "we think the universe might have started out like this" (keyword in that sentence: think). I'm perfectly happy to accept that theory for what it is: an educated guess at what the early stages of the universe might have been. It doesn't attempt to explain why the universe started or even how it started, it just describes what it might have been like and what might have happened afterwards. It has nothing to do with whether God exists or not. The fact that the time line disagrees with a two thousand year old text is incidental, not intentional.

BTW, if I were a creationist who felt the need, I would argue their case a different way to what is being tried here. I'd say God created the universe a few thousand years ago, but (being all-powerful like he is) he created it in such a way that on day one it already had the properties of a universe which is a few billion years old. It already had fully developed galaxies and fossils with old carbon dates and so on. From that point on everything continued as normal. Why did he do that? Well that's for him to know. Obviously it's all part of his Plan.

I'd like to hear from anyone who thinks they can find a flaw in that argument, given the assumption that God exists and is all-powerful. :|\\

[Letum]

The debate can be quickly closed by asking what would falsify creationism?

[Tribesman]

The debate can be quickly closed by asking what would falsify creationism?
The best way to prove creationism as it is sold wrong would be to prove that two beings emerged from a giants armpit as the offspring of a cow and a giant.
After all you can only compare mythology with mythology.

[Skybird]

Sounds very much like a religious dogma to me. You put your faith into science and count or rather hope they are correct. Other put their faith in a book, in a scroll or verbal transmitted legends, or history. Button line is, it makes no difference. It is all about faith or believe in one system or construct or another.

no that is not true - you just claim this to minimise the value of the scientific method. The way UI describe it is not just taken out of the blue or by refrering to some fictional writing, but is basing on conclusions based on observation, it is based on my knowledge about science' own descritpion of it'S methodlogy and it'S inherent criterias. I do not need to just believe these things.

When I stand on a mass that revolves around itself, and I let fall an apple in my hand, then I even must not see it faling to the ground, but I know it falls to the ground. Believing has nothing to do with it. I know there is an (uncomplete) theory of that gravitation, that bases on earlier observations and calculations, and that the strength of gravitation has something to do with how fast the apple falls. I can possibly even calculate the speed in advance, and where the apple will hit the ground.


Oh, and just for the record: You might want to fact check your first sentence. It is the popular believe that it is in constant motion and non rigid. Unfortunately that is not always true. Especially heavy contested theories can be extremely rigid and outright hostile towards opponents, see Global Warming debate, or rather non debate for examples. The theory of creationism is another example of outright hostility and close mindedness, the same attributes that are slapped on religious believers, by the way.
Nice hypocrisy you got there..

that is bollocks, and you better should check your own understanding of facts first. Your error is that you do not differ between science and methodology, and paradigm. Paradigms are long-lasting influential "meta-theories", so to speak, that serve as a praemisse for all subordinate scientific work being done, they also can influence the way an object of interest is being approached in method and observation design. But even paradigms do change over time. And never are their valdity that total that some rebels do not work in violation of them, sometimes proving them wrong, while often a poaradigm slowls fades out due to contradictions in the results it produces in observation and prediction. The relativisation of the Newton physics and Cartesian way to see and interprete the world may serve as examples.

That you think you must especially name Global Warming Scepticism and Creationism as examples defending your point, tells me something about how close-minded you are yourself. Becasue these express what you want to see taken as serious, but you do not check whether or not the claims of these do qualify for being seen as scientific argument. In case of creationism, it is no scientific qualification whatever, it even does not base on any basis of objective observation, but just narration and imgination, reilgious dogmatism and hear-say. In case of Global Warming Scepoticism, there has been so many, many systematic attempts by the interest economy elites to ridicule the statements of global waming research and every year a very influential lobby channels hundreds of millions in support for ridiciulous "alternative" scnearios who all just have two points in common: these constztructions are propagadanda efforts who heavily distort both existing scientific data or distort the scientific methodlogy to present their own"conclusions" or quote existing data out of context. From the "theory" of the more CO" the greener the pklanet to generally increasing ice levels at the poles, from sun activity being the deciding factor behind warming to fake petitions of thousands of scinetisits who either does not exist or were brought to sign by raising fake institutions and fake projects and showing them fake documents to sign, but then claimning they signed something different - the one that is presented to the public.

That all is no scientific methodology, and what it results in therefore rightfully should be rejected to be compared to scinece - as if it could meet science on same eye level.

It cannot.

Nevertheless to achieve this result is the purpose of your post.

[goldorak]

I'm sorry, there can be no debate; Creationism as a theory (scientific theory ?) to paraphrase one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century "is not even wrong".
Evolution is a fact, you may dispute the mechanism through which evolution manifests itself (natural selection), but refuting evolution is akin to refuting that we orbit the sun.
I always wonder why is it that the rest of the civilised world has no problem with the scientific theory of Evolution, whereas it is a gigantic problem in the US. :hmmm:

[Skybird]

I always wonder why is it that the rest of the civilised world has no problem with the scientific theory of Evolution, whereas it is a gigantic problem in the US. :hmmm:

Isn't the answer obvious...? Religion plays a greater role in the US and has a stronger influence on wider parts of the society, than in Europe. In parts of the old world where relgion is stronger than in european mean, you also see a stronger symoathy for creationism (Poland, and the slvic-orthodox- sphere in general). Even in the islamic society, an islamised version of creationism is spreading rapidly, for example in turkey, and now also in Syria. especially the religious conservatives with quite a good ammount of education fall for it. creationism is more of what relgious conservatives are used to. That's why it is welcomed the more the more fundamentalist it's audience is. And that is true for Christian AND Muhammedan countries.


Damn, first I point out how pointless this thread will be, and then I stay here and even participate in the pointless effort. I better should listen to myself.

I'm out here. ;) Can't believe i even spend time arguing in here.

[goldorak]

The funny thing I think about this debate that if you dig deep enough, both sides come down to "faith". The science term for faith is a theory.
Here's the oh-ffical mcbee policy on the subject.

The purpose of religion is to prepare you for the afterlife. So, I say follow your teachings, live a good life, and the rest will work itself out. So I say it doesn't really matter how old the earth is or where man/life came from in the end; the bottom line is, were you a good person?

I think both extreames are to bent on that they are right and the other is wrong:doh:. I'd say there's a lot of truth to both sides of the argument.

I really don't get that worked up about the topic, but I do find it really funny to watch both sides fall all over themsevles to prove the other is wrong.:haha:

Nikimcbee you fail to understand just what a scientific theory is.
I doubt you would even understand what the scientific method is all about. Man this is an age of scientific obscurantism.
Carl Sagan must be screaming in his grave.
:nope: :nope:

[goldorak]

Isn't the answer obvious...? Religion plays a greater role in the US and has a stronger influence on wider parts of the society, than in Europe. In parts of the old world where relgion is stronger than in european mean, you also see a stronger symoathy for creationism (Poland, and the slvic-orthodox- sphere in general). Even in the islamic society, an islamised version of creationism is spreading rapidly, for example in turkey, and now also in Syria. especially the religious conservatives with quite a good ammount of education fall for it. creationism is more of what relgious conservatives are used to. That's why it is welcomed the more the more fundamentalist it's audience is. And that is true for Christian AND Muhammedan countries.



No, the answer is not obvious at all. If it were as you say Italy should declare Evolution as being banned from schools. Hey we have the Vatican and all it represents. If there is one country on earth were Religion has a political voice and influences a laic society it is Italy. But even here you don't hear the Pope or ArchBishops, or other eclisiasts touting that Darwin's Theory is nonsense and that Creationism is the answer.
No the problem is much much deeper. I think it has to do with a failing of understanding of what science is all about. Ignorance, this is about ignorance or as I say obscurantism.
In the US religion is more open, but it has much less influence in the public sphere than the Vatican has in Italy. And nontheless the Creationist debate is over there, not here. It makes you think about what an entire generation of americans is learning or not learning actually about the methods of science.

[Skybird]

I disagree, Goldorak. Remember that old debate we had about the drastic increase of evangelical'S influence in the US armed forces, namely the Air Force? The public routs in some places in the Us wehre Creatijists and orthodox tried to install relgious pseudo-science parallel to science lessons in curruculums of public schools? Bush defending this?

Creationism is creeping forward in almost all of europe, just with varying speeds. strongest it is in - extremely conservative - Poland. Spain also gets mentioned, and it too is quite a conservative catholic country, although the socialist government drives splits and trenches into the population by confronting the churche's influence. The fastest creationism grows in the Eastern european (slavic) regions, and Russia.

Italy I just don't know. Thge role of the church I see there as comparable to the role of the church in Poland.

creationism's spread is slowest in France, Germany, and the Nordic countries. They have in common to be amongst the most "areligious" countries in Europe, if ignoring their Islamic parallel societies for a moment.

In the Muslim world, creationism grows fast in Turkey I know for sure, as well as in Syria, but also fast in Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, I read.

[Morts]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk :DL

[CaptainHaplo]

For all those participating in a constructive way - Thank you!

A "young earth" belief does not mean that one cannot acknowledge the process of natural selection. It simply postulates that the earth and the life it sustains is not the product of untold billions of years worth of random chance happenings that all just amazingly came together to bring us to here we are.

Onelifecrisis - most young earth theories do exactly as you suggest, noting that God did not just create the earth, but the universe as well, and thus laid down its laws and set things in motion just about as we see them today, including putting the light we see from stars millions of light years away already in place, etc.

Stealth-hunter - unfortunately the theory of evolution must be tied to the origin of the universe, simply because of the amount of time that evolution states it takes for the huge changes it postulates have occured throughout the history of the universe. If it takes a billion years for a fish to develop lungs, then it and its evolving progeny has to have a place to swim for that billion years. If the earth can be demonstrated to not be a relatively stable and suitable platform for such a time frame, then water breathers could not have evolved into mammalian life forms on the earth, as is stated in the evolutionary theory. Hard to evolve if the planet your on doesn't exist...

McBee - I am not falling over myself to prove a different view wrong. I find that open debate can often open me, and others up, to additional information that can be used to further refine and modify my own belief based on reasonably demonstrated and verifiable facts.

More to come.

[CaptainHaplo]

Sailor Steve-

Regarding the moon - the 750 Million year age is the absolute maximum possible, meaning evolution would not have had the time to occur as evolution postulates. This simply shows that the evolutionary timeline is flawed. However, there is nothing that states that God, in his wisdom, did not create the moon somewhat closer to the earth, a few thousand years ago, which is the view put forth by the young earth theory.

Aramike - Oil wells.

The density does have a place in the equation, but porous rock under significant pressure usually over time slowly loses its structural integrity (the barriers between can break down). Rock under enough pressure will crumble, while cork, in your example - under the pressure of champagne, is "springy" enough to actually compress and thus INCREASE its density (and thus the tensile strength of the barriers between the pores) as well as collapsing the pores themselves, limiting the pressure that can be applied to them. Rock has no such ability, nor is it under the constraints of pressure from a stronger, outside source, unlike a cork that is held in place by the constraints of the stronger glass that surrounds and compresses it. Its also fair to note that the pressure igneous rock is subjected to is much greater than that of cork sealing a bottle. While at first glance its a nice picture, a closer look shows your comparing apples to oranges, and not apples to apples, which is why the comparison is not vaild.

On that same note - Sailor Steve, the young earth theory puts the formation of such oil wells - and indeed the formation of oil in its many parts of the world, at between merely 3-4 thousand years ago. In fact, the mere presence of oil in the great quantities it is seen actually are one of many evidences of a worldwide, bilbilcal flood, as described in the time of "Noah". This time frame would explain why there is still pressure on the wells.

Aramike - on the mito-eve - I am not sure I understood your counterpoint. I understand your saying its invalid - but your explanation of why wasn't something I could follow. Could you explain it in a step by step process so I can evaluate it? I am not trying to be difficult, but there must be facts in the argument I am not aware of that invalidate the concept, because what you said was as clear as mud to me.

Lastly - to tribesman - since I rarely am going to stoop to acknowledging your inane comments. You again prove your lack of openmindedness and forthrightness considering the whole thing section on "dragon bones", you noted it specifically references the animal in question and identifies it as a T-rex. The original author substituted terms, which you well knew, but instead wanted to pick and choose to try and discredit an entire arguement. You also have a PM regarding this.

I really like some of the points brought up - but so far, all I have seen is "counterpoints" to why a young earth can't be accurate - but not a single post pointing out why evolution is a fact. Cmon people - a debate is an open forum to present both sides, not just poke holes in one. Lets have some arguements that point out the other side. If no one puts any out, then some may conclude that the "evolution" camp has no proof at all......

Oh - Platypus - no I don't think creationism and evolution must be distinct and seperate views personally.

[Letum]

Halpo:
Hypothetically, if it was the case that the 'Young Earth' idea was
incorrect, what kind of evidence would we find that we do not find now?

Or to put it another way: What evidence of age would an old Earth
produce that this young Earth does not?

[Skybird]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--OWKYNm66s


Beside that and what Letum said, why to assume young world "theory" in the first? There is no hint and not evidence for ther world being that young, and there is no other need to assume that "theory" (it is no theory, but a claim) that would be different from creationism simply claiming that the world is young.

Also, get your scientific knowledge straight. The "timetable" of evolution and the earth's age you just outlined is so much out of scale and so extremely, unbelievably simplified that I would not even know where to begin. That is no model you described there - it simply is utmost confusion. A confusion you claim to be real scinece in the next step, and accusing this science then to be of flaws and errors. But actually you just point out the flaws and errors in your own inadequate understanding of the matter. And that is not science's problem - but yours.

For German readers, to introduce yourself in a very entertaining, yet competent way to the timetable of the earth's developement, and the emerging of life and the forming of species in the oceans, I recommend the wonderful and very entertaining, exciting (thick) book by Frank Schätzing, "Nachrichten aus einem unbekannten Universum". Books like this that are entertaining and educating at the same time are a true gift for readers interested in a popular and general understanding of science.

You talk a lot about openmindedness, Haplo. What you mean by that is just this: you want hear-say and unproven, unreasonable fantasies being taken as serious science, that qualifies as that by criterias of academic and scientific standards. I think that demand is - sorry to be so blunt - impertinent, not only when it is being raised by you, but by religions in general. That's what makes projects and attempts like this thread so very annoying. You demand recoignition and merit for something that does not qualify for receiving it. As if we do not already have to deal with a Pope who tries to reverse enlightenment and wants to claim science for the church by trying to force it under a preamisse of that science may all be nice and well but must necessarily base in all working and concluding on assuming God to be real in the first. How very much absurd, anti-scientific and a true assassination of reasonability that is.

[goldorak]

Did God in his infinite wisdom guided the asteriod that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and therefore to the humans as the dominant species on this planet ?
What do you say CaptainHaplo ? Chance or Destiny ?

[goldorak]

CaptainHaplo wrote :

How old is the earth? No one was alive to see its beginning, so there is no direct testamony to that beginning. However, a "Young Earth" - aka a planetary age somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years old is demonstrated by a number of scientific facts.



Meteor Crater in Arizona is estimated to be 50 000 years old.
How does that compute with your young earth "theory" ? :hmmm:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Meteor.jpg

Is the crater a hoax done by the evil evolutionists ? :haha:

[Tribesman]

Lastly - to tribesman - since I rarely am going to stoop to acknowledging your inane comments. You again prove your lack of openmindedness
Too funny.
Creationism, especially young earth creationism, requires a complete lack of openmindness.
That is demonstrated perfectly by your approach to the subject and by the sites you posted, the whole pattern of which is best summised as simply attempting to make things fit to a preconcieved position and flatly rejecting anything that doesn't fit.
Creationism is by its very nature a closeminded concept.

[Skybird]

Dman, one wants to avoid this thread, but one cannot! :haha: If this craving is a symptom for an addiction, I maybe need a therapy?!

If world is only 6-10 thousand years old, why does light reach us from stars hundreds of thousands of lightyears away, and why does light reach us from galaxies millions of lightyears away?

Why are there fossils of much greater age - has some excentric deity walked around in his creation, placed some faked artefacts in the earth to fool parts of his creation, and giggles in the background for man being so stupid to take them as evidence for timeframes beyond 10000 years? Is this deity doing this a jester, a pervert - or just senile? Obviously he/she/it must be older than just 10000 years. At least 10000 years and 7 days old.

However, even wikipedia has usable material on Haplo's claim that the Young Earth "Theory" is true.


Lack of scientific acceptance

YEC was abandoned as a mainstream scientific concept around the start of the 19th century.[73] (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/#cite_note-72) Most scientists see it as a non-scientific position, and regard attempts to prove it scientifically as being little more than religiously motivated pseudoscience (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Pseudoscience). In 1997, a poll by the Gallup organization showed that 5% of US adults with professional degrees in science took a YEC view. In the aforementioned poll 40% of the same group said that they believed that life, including humans, had evolved over millions of years, but that God (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/God) guided this process; a view described as theistic evolution (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Theistic_evolution), while 55% held a view of "naturalistic evolution" in which no God took part in this process.[74] (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/#cite_note-gallup_1997-73) Some scientists (such as Hugh Ross (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Hugh_Ross_(creationist)) and Gerald Schroeder (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Gerald_Schroeder)) who believe in creationism are known to subscribe to other forms such as Old Earth creationism (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Old_Earth_creationism) which posits an act of creation that took place millions or billions of years ago, with variations on the timing of the creation of mankind.
Creationist methodology

Against the Young Earth Creationist attacks on "evolutionism" and "Darwinism", critics argue that every challenge to evolution by YECs is either made in an unscientific fashion, or is readily explainable by science, and that while a gap in scientific knowledge may exist now it is likely to be closed through further research. While scientists acknowledge that there are indeed a number of gaps in the scientific theory, they generally reject the creationist viewpoint that these gaps represent fatal, insurmountable flaws with evolution. Those working in the field who pointed out the gaps in the first place have often explicitly rejected the creationist interpretation. The "God of the gaps (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/God_of_the_gaps)" viewpoint has also been criticized by theologians (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Theology) and philosophers (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Philosophy)[75] (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/#cite_note-74), although creationists claim that their models are based on what is known, not on gaps in knowledge[citation needed (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)].
Christian YECs adhere strongly to the concept of biblical inerrancy (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Biblical_inerrancy), which declares the Bible to be divinely inspired and therefore scientifically infallible and non-correctable. This position is considered by devotees and critics alike to be incompatible with the principles of scientific objectivity (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Objectivity_(philosophy)#Epistemic_objectivity). The creationist organizations Answers in Genesis (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Answers_in_Genesis) (AiG) and Institute for Creation Research (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Institute_for_Creation_Research) (ICR) require all members to pledge support for biblical inerrancy.
YECs often suggest that supporters of evolution theory are primarily motivated by atheism (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Atheism). Critics reject this claim by pointing out that many supporters of evolutionary theory are in fact religious believers, and that major religious groups such as the Roman Catholic Church (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Church) and Church of England (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Church_of_England) believe that the concept of biological evolution does not imply a rejection of the scriptures. Nor do they support the specific doctrines of biblical inerrancy proposed by YEC. Critics also point out that workers in fields related to evolutionary biology are not required to sign statements of belief in evolution comparable to the biblical inerrancy pledges required by ICR (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Institute_for_Creation_Research) and AiG (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Answers_in_Genesis). This is contrary to the popular belief of creationists that scientists operate on an a priori (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori_(philosophy)) disbelief in biblical principles[76] (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/#cite_note-75). They also discount Christian faith positions, like those of French Jesuit priest, geologist and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Pierre_Teilhard_de_Chardin), who saw that his work with evolutionary sciences actually confirmed and inspired his faith in the cosmic Christ. Nor do they believe the views of Catholic priest Fr. Thomas Berry (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Thomas_Berry), a cultural historian and eco-theologian, that the cosmological (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Cosmology) 13 billion year "Universe Story" provides all faiths and all traditions a single account by which the divine has made its presence in the world.
Proponents of YEC are regularly accused of quote mining (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Quote_mining), the practice of isolating passages from academic texts that appear to support their claims while deliberately excluding context and conclusions to the contrary.[77] (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/#cite_note-76)
Theological

Some theologians oppose the proposition that God can be a legitimate or viable subject for scientific experimentation, and reject a literal interpretation of Genesis. They propose there are statements in the creation week itself which render the historical interpretation of Genesis (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Book_of_Genesis) incompatible with scientific evidence (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Scientific_evidence).
One example is that God created the Earth and heavens, and light, on Day 1, plant life on Day 3, and the sun and moon on Day 4. One must ask where the light in Day 1 came from, and why there were plants in Day 3 if the sun, which provides all light to the Earth, did not even exist until Day 4.[78] (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/#cite_note-77) YECs such as Basil the Great (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Basil_the_Great) and John Calvin (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/John_Calvin) answered this by suggesting that the light created by God on Day 1 was the light source. Answers in Genesis (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Answers_in_Genesis) has refined this by suggesting that the Earth was already rotating with respect to this light.[79] (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/#cite_note-78) One can also make a case that God created the plants toward the evening of Day 3, the Sun was created on the morning of Day 4, therefore the plants only had to endure darkness for a period not much longer than a typical night.
Another problem is the fact that distant galaxies can be seen. If the universe did not exist until 10,000 years ago, then light from anything farther than 10,000 light-years would not have time to reach us. Most cosmologists accept an inflation model as the likely explanation for the horizon problem. Inflationary models also account for other phenomena, and are in agreement with observations of recent microwave anisotropy satellites. Creationists have also proposed models to explain why we see distant starlight.[80] (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/#cite_note-79)[81] (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/#cite_note-80) See creationist cosmologies (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Creationist_cosmologies) for more information.
Many critics claim that Genesis itself is internally inconsistent on the question of whether man was created before the animals (Genesis 2:19 (http://blb.org/cgi-bin/index.pl?type=pf&translation=NIV&handref=Genesis+2%3A19)) or after the animals as stated in Genesis 1. Proponents of the Documentary hypothesis (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis) suggest that Genesis 1 was a litany (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Litany) from the Priestly (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Priestly_source) source (possibly from an early Jewish liturgy (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Liturgy)) while Genesis 2 was assembled from older Jahwist (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Jahwist) material, holding that for both stories to be a single account, Adam would have named all the animals, and God would have created Eve from his rib as a suitable mate, all within a single 24 hour period. Many creationists attribute this view to misunderstanding having arisen from poor translation of the tenses in Genesis 2 in contemporary translations of the Bible (e.g. compare "planted" and "had planted" in KJV (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Gen%202:8;&version=9) and NIV (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Gen%202:8;&version=31)).[82] (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/#cite_note-81) Some Christians assert that the Bible is free from error only in religious and moral matters, and that where scientific questions are concerned, the Bible should not be read literally. This position is held by a number of major denominations. For instance, in a publication entitled The Gift of Scripture[83] (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/#cite_note-82), the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Church_in_England_and_Wales) comments that "We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision". The Bible is held to be true in passages relating to human salvation, but "We should not expect total accuracy from the Bible in other, secular matters."[84] (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/#cite_note-83) By contrast, YECs contend that moral and spiritual matters in the Bible are intimately connected with its historical accuracy; in their view, the Bible stands or falls as a single indivisible block of knowledge.[85] (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/#cite_note-84)
Aside from the theological doubts voiced by other Christians, YEC also stands in opposition to the creation mythologies (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Creation_myth) of other religions (both extant (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/extant) and extinct (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Extinct)). Many of these make claims regarding the origin of the universe and humanity that are completely incompatible with those of Christian creationists (and with one another)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism

Google delivers you plenty of more ripping apart of creationist claims.

The main problems are that creationism takes the Bible literally, and unerring. By doing so, it already seals it's fate as being no science at all.

[NeonSamurai]

I'm only going to make one comment on this thread, and a minor one


Evolution is a fact, you may dispute the mechanism through which evolution manifests itself (natural selection), but refuting evolution is akin to refuting that we orbit the sun.

Not exactly correct, evolution is not a fact, it is a theory. Natural selection is a hypothesis based on the theory of evolution. Evolution is also not directly observable, where as orbiting the sun is.

I'm not going to waste my time on the rest of the thread.

[antikristuseke]

I will be presenting the side of scientific creationism. This means that I will bring forward evidence of a "young" earth, rebut as best I can challenges to such evidence with logic and fact, as well as demonstrate how evolution is a flawed theory lacking credible evidence.

How old is the earth? No one was alive to see its beginning, so there is no direct testamony to that beginning. However, a "Young Earth" - aka a planetary age somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years old is demonstrated by a number of scientific facts.

#1 Let us look to the sky in the night and see our celestial neighbor - the Moon. The gravitational pull between the Earth and Moon causes the Earth’s oceans to have tides. The tidal friction between the Earth’s terrestrial surface and the water moving over it causes energy to be added to the Moon. This results in a constant yearly increase in the distance between the Earth and Moon. This tidal friction also causes the Earth’s rotation to slow down, but more importantly, the energy added to the Moon causes it to recede from the Earth. The rate of recession was measured at four centimeters per year in 1981, however, according to Physicist Donald B. DeYoung: "One cannot extrapolate the present 4 cm/year separation rate back into history. It has that value today, but was more rapid in the past because of tidal effects. In fact, the separation rate depends on the distance to the 6th power, a very strong dependence ... the rate ... was perhaps 20 m/year ‘long’ ago, and the average is 1.2 m/year.
Because of this, the Moon must be less than 750 million years old -- or 20% of the supposed 4.5 billion-year age of the Earth-Moon system theorized by evolution.

First of all, this has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution does not deal with celestial bodies, the beginning of life, the beginning of space and time etc. It deals with the change in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. That is all. I should ignore this, but will not.

Anyway, here is a response to why you are wrong.

1. The moon is receding at about 3.8 cm per year. Since the moon is 3.85 × 10 to the 10th power cm from the earth, this is already consistent, within an order of magnitude, with an earth-moon system billions of years old.

2. The magnitude of tidal friction depends on the arrangement of the continents. In the past, the continents were arranged such that tidal friction, and thus the rates of earth's slowing and the moon's recession, would have been less. The earth's rotation has slowed at a rate of two seconds every 100,000 years (Eicher 1976).

3. The rate of earth's rotation in the distant past can be measured. Corals produce skeletons with both daily layers and yearly patterns, so we can count the number of days per year when the coral grew. Measurements of fossil corals from 180 to 400 million years ago show year lengths from 381 to 410 days, with older corals showing more days per year (Eicher 1976; Scrutton 1970; Wells 1963; 1970). Similarly, days per year can also be computed from growth patterns in mollusks (Pannella 1976; Scrutton 1978) and stromatolites (Mohr 1975; Pannella et al. 1968) and from sediment deposition patterns (Williams 1997). All such measurements are consistent with a gradual rate of earth's slowing for the last 650 million years.

4. The clocks based on the slowing of earth's rotation described above provide an independent method of dating geological layers over most of the fossil record. The data is inconsistent with a young earth.

References:
1. Eicher, D. L., 1976. Geologic Time. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
2. Mohr, R. E., 1975. Measured periodicities of the Biwabik (Precambrian) stromatolites and their geophysical significance. In: Rosenberg and Runcorn, pp. 43-56.
3. Pannella, G., 1976. Tidal growth patterns in Recent and fossil mollusc bivalve shells: A tool for the reconstruction of paleotides. Naturwissenschaften 63: 539-543.
4. Pannella, G., C. MacClintock and M. Thompson, 1968. Paleontological evidence of variation in length of synodic month since Late Cambrian. Science 162: 792-796.
5. Rosenberg, G. D. and S. K. Runcorn (eds.), 1975. Growth Rhythms and the History of the Earth's Rotation. New York: Wiley.
Scrutton, C. T., 1970. Evidence for a monthly periodicity in the growth of some corals. In: Palaeogeophysics, S. K. Runcorn, ed., London: Academic Press, pp. 11-16.
6. Scrutton, C. T., 1978. Periodic growth features in fossil organisms and the length of the day and month. In: Tidal Friction and the Earth's Rotation. P. 7. Brosche and J. Sundermann, eds., Berlin: Springer-Verlag, pp. 154-196.
8. Wells, J. W., 1963. Coral growth and geochronometry. Nature 197: 948-950.
9. Wells, J. W., 1970. Problems of annual and daily growth-rings in corals. In: Palaeogeophysics, S. K. Runcorn, ed., London: Academic Press, pp. 3-9.
10. Williams, G. E., 1997. Precambrian length of day and the validity of tidal rhythmite paleotidal values. Geophysical Research Letters 24(4): 421-424.



#2 Oil Wells - When oil wells are drilled, the oil is almost always found to be under great pressure. This presents a problem for those who claim "millions of years" for the age of oil, simply because rocks are porous. In other words, as time goes by the oil should seep into tiny pores in the surrounding rock, and, over time, reduce the pressure. However, for some reason it doesn't. This has nothing to do with evolution, I get a feeling this thread should be named science vs young earth to be more accurate.
Anyway this is because every known substance is porous to a degree, but if it is dense enough it can still form a seal. Though my knowledge of the physics involved here is very limited.

#3 Our Friend the Sun - Measurements of the sun's diameter over the past several hundred years indicate that it is shrinking at the rate of five feet per hour. Assuming that this rate has been constant in the past we can conclude that the earth would have been so hot only one million years ago that no life could have survived. And only 11,200,000 years ago the sun would have physically touched the earth.
1. This assumes that the rate of shrinkage is constant. That assumption is baseless. (In fact, it is the uniformitarian assumption that creationists themselves sometimes complain about.) Other stars expand and contract cyclically. Our own sun might do the same on a small scale.

2. There is not even any good evidence of shrinkage. The claim is based on a single report from 1980. Other measurements, from 1980 and later, do not show any significant shrinkage. It is likely that the original report showing shrinkage contained systematic errors due to different measuring techniquies over the decades.

#4 The Air We Breathe - Carbon-14 is produced when radiation from the sun strikes Nitrogen-14 atoms in the earth's upper atmosphere. The earth's atmosphere is not yet saturated with C14. This means that the amount of C14 being produced is greater than the amount that is decaying back to N14. It is estimated that a state of equilibrium would be reached in as little as 30,000 years. Thus, it appears that the earth's atmosphere is less than 30,000 years old. In fact, the evidence suggests it is less than 10,000 years old. This is the first time I hear this argument, but alas, this has nothing to do with evolution, again.
Anyway this argument is flawed because it assumes a constant conversion rate of N14 into C14, while it is everything but. (Strahler, Arthur N. 1987. Science and Earth History, p.158)
Tree-ring dating gives us a wonderful check on the radiocarbon dating method for the last 8000 years. That is, we can use carbon-14 dating on a given tree-ring (the 8000-year sequence having been assembled from the overlapping tree-ring patterns of living and dead trees) and compare the resulting age with the tree-ring date. A study of the deviations from the accurate tree-ring dating sequence shows that the earth's magnetic field has an important effect on carbon-14 production. When the dipole moment is strong, carbon-14 production is suppressed below normal; when it is weak, carbon-14 production is boosted above normal. What the magnetic field does is to partially shield the earth from cosmic rays which produce carbon-14 high in the atmosphere.

#5 "Mother" Eve's DNA - In 1989 scientists said that they had compared the Mitochondrial DNA of various different races of people and concluded that they all came from a single woman (they called her Eve) who lived from 100,000-200,000 years ago.This story was widely reported in the press. A few years later scientists actually measured the rate of Mitochondrial mutations and discovered that they changed about 20 times faster than was earlier reported. This means that "Eve" did not live 100,000-200,000 years ago but rather only 5,000-10,000.
Finally an argument that actualy has something to do with evolution, yay. Anyway the "mitochondrial Eve," to which this claim refers, is the most recent common female ancestor, not the original female ancestor. There would have been other humans living earlier and at the same time. The mtDNA lineages of other women contemporary with her eventually died out. Mitochondrial Eve was merely the youngest common ancestor of all today's mtDNA. She may not even have been human.

As of the mutation rate:
1. The claim is founded primarily on the work of Parsons et al. (1997), who found that the substitution rate was about 25 times higher in the mitochondria control region, which is less than 7% of the mitochondrial genome (mtDNA). Revised studies of all of the mtDNA find that the control region varies greatly in substitution rates in different populations, but that the rest of the mtDNA shows no such variation (Ingman et al. 2000). Using mtDNA excluding the control region, they placed the age of the most recent common mitochondrial ancestor at 171,500 +/- 50,000 years ago.

Gibbons (1998) refers to mutations that cause heteroplasmy (inheritance of two or more mtDNA sequences). This does not apply to mitochondrial Eve research, which is based only on substitution mutation rates.

2. A study similar to the mtEve research was done on a region of the X chromosome which does not recombine with the smaller Y chromosome; it placed the most recent common ancestor 535,000 +/- 119,000 years ago (Kaessmann et al. 1999). Since the population size of X chromosomes is effectively three times larger than mitochondria (two X chromosomes from women and one from men can get inherited), the most recent common ancestor should be about three times older than that of the Mitochondrial Eve, and it is.

Refrences:
1. Gibbons, A. 1998. Calibrating the mitochondrial clock. Science 279: 28-29.
2. Ingman, M., H. Kaessmann, S. Pääbo and U. Gyllensten. 2000. Mitochondrial genome variation and the origin of modern humans. Nature 408: 708-713.
3. Kaessmann, H., F. Heissig, A. von Haeseler and S. Pääbo. 1999. DNA sequence variation in a non-coding region of low recombination on the human X chromosome. Nature Genetics 22: 78-81.
4. Loewe, L. and S. Scherer. 1997. Mitochondrial Eve: the plot thickens. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 12(11): 422-423
5. Parsons, T. J. et al. 1997. A high observed substitution rate in the human mitochondrial control region. Nature Genetics 15: 363-368.

#6 Look at all the People - Today the earth's population doubles about every 50 years. If we assumed only half of the current growth rate and start with one couple, it would take less than 4,000 years to achieve today's population.
Back to stuff that has nothing to do with with evolution.
And this argument is plainly silly. Wars and plagues would have caused populations to drop from time to time. In particular, population sizes before agriculture would have been severely limited and would have had an average population growth of zero for any number of years. Then there is sanitation which affects attrition of humans. The kind of exponential population growth we see was impossible in the past due to the limitation of technology.

#7 The Dead Sea - The Dead Sea is in Israel. It is receives fresh water from the Sea of Galilee via the Jordan River. The Dead Sea has a very high salt content. Even so, it continues to get saltier since it has no outlet other than by evaporation. Scientists have measured the amount of salt added each year by the Jordan River; and they have also calculated the amount of salt in the Dead Sea. From these it is possible to estimate how long this process has been going on for. Assuming a constant rate of salt/water flow, and a zero salt level at the beginning, then the age of the Dead Sea is only 13,000 year old.

A comparison between the chemical composition of the water of the Dead Sea and its tributaries and that of other lakes and the ocean shows the average salinity of the Dead Sea water (31.50%) to be exceptionally high, concentration of the SO 4 ''-ion to be very low and that of Br (5920mg/1) to be probably the highest on record for any surface water. Most of the cationic calcium in the Dead Sea and its tributaries is balanced by chloride. A short summary of the geological history of the area shows that the Dead Sea is not a relict body of sea water; its salt assemblage is the result of accumulation in a closed inland basin under arid conditions. The salts originate from two main sources, about one third from the Jordan River and about two thirds from highly saline springs discharging into the Dead Sea. On this fact a method can be based for calculating the age of the Dead Sea leading to a maximum figure of about 70,000 and a minimum of 12,000 years, the latter being more probable. The annual amount of chemical precipitation in the Southern Dead Sea basin is calculated to 0.306 gr/cm 2 and it is shown that NaCl and CaSO 4 are the major and that CaCO 3 is a minor component. This result is in good agreement with observations on the present rate of chemical sedimentation in the Dead Sea. Volcanic and organic origins for the vast bromine reserve in the Dead Sea are rejected and the derivation of the bromine from fossil residual brines, formed during the Tertiary, is tentatively accepted.

Refrences:
Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, vol. 25, Issue 4, pp.239-240
Additional detail and sources regarding these evidences along with others may be researched at the following links:

http://www.earthage.org/youngearthev/evidence_for_a_young_earth.htm (http://www.earthage.org/youngearthev/evidence_for_a_young_earth.htm)
http://www.trueorigin.org/mitochondrialeve01.asp (http://www.trueorigin.org/mitochondrialeve01.asp)

Any aditional information available at www.Talkorigins.org

[antikristuseke]

Not exactly correct, evolution is not a fact, it is a theory. Natural selection is a hypothesis based on the theory of evolution. Evolution is also not directly observable, where as orbiting the sun is.


This is wrong. For several reasons. One of those things is that evolution is directly observable, instances of speciation for instance.
Here is a list of some:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html

[NeonSamurai]

Evolution is not directly observable any more then gravity is. You can observe the effects of gravity, but not gravity itself. That is why gravity is a theory not a fact, same goes for evolution.

That paper is observing differences, they are not observing actual speciation, but the effects of it assuming the hypothesis is correct.

[goldorak]

Dman, one wants to avoid this thread, but one cannot! :haha: If this craving is a symptom for an addiction, I maybe need a therapy?!


Oh c'mon now Skybird, its too funny to debunk "alternative pseudo scientific" theories. I proclaim that after debunking Creationism, we should have a debate on wether the americans really landed on the moon in 1969, followed obviously by a debate on "did 9/11 really happened, or was it just a consipracy from the US government to green light its imperialistic view on the world". It should make a very interesting and funny debate. :rotfl2:


If world is only 6-10 thousand years old, why does light reach us from stars hundreds of thousands of lightyears away, and why does light reach us from galaxies millions of lightyears away?


Now now, be carefull we wouldn't want alternative astrophysicists telling us that the cosmological redshift is nonsense. :rotfl2:


Why are there fossils of much greater age - has some excentric deity walked around in his creation, placed some faked artefacts in the earth to fool parts of his creation, and giggles in the background for man being so stupid to take them as evidence for timeframes beyond 10000 years? Is this deity doing this a jester, a pervert - or just senile? Obviously he/she/it must be older than just 10000 years. At least 10000 years and 7 days old.


Don't try to introduce scientific arguments, it will lead you to nowhere. :O:






However, even wikipedia has usable material on Haplo's claim that the Young Earth "Theory" is true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism

Google delivers you plenty of more ripping apart of creationist claims.

The main problems are that creationism takes the Bible literally, and unerring. By doing so, it already seals it's fate as being no science at all.

How do you debunk something thats no even a scientific theory ? :dead:
Treating Creationism on the same level of any other kind of scientific theory only legitimizes their view.

[antikristuseke]

Evolution is both fact and theory, same for gravity. In science theory is basically a model with explains observations, a description of a process if you will. We understand far less of gravity than we do of evolution.

And those are observed instances of speciation since the two or more species are no longer capable of interbreeding. Definitions, these are important in science.

[Onkel Neal]

I'm sorry, there can be no debate; Creationism as a theory (scientific theory ?) to paraphrase one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century "is not even wrong".
Evolution is a fact, you may dispute the mechanism through which evolution manifests itself (natural selection), but refuting evolution is akin to refuting that we orbit the sun.
I always wonder why is it that the rest of the civilised world has no problem with the scientific theory of Evolution, whereas it is a gigantic problem in the US. :hmmm:

Is it a "gigantic" problem in the US? I don't see how it is really slowing us down. Come on, say it. You want to say we're all stupid ;)
You only believe the earth orbits the sun because that's what you were taught. Did you ever try to prove it for yourself?


concluding on assuming God to be real in the first. How very much absurd, anti-scientific and a true assassination of reasonability that is.

I can imagine, 3000 years or so ago, one man saying how unreasonable and anti-scientific it was to consider the earth as anything other than a flat form--how do you think everything stays down!?! :)

Yeah, you are right when you said science is a growing, changing process. It has been wrong as many times as religion. You believe what makes sense to you, and just like a man from 3000 years ago, he believed what made sense to him. He took the science of his time, it made sense to him, he believed it. When science is proven wrong and corrects itself, people adjust their beliefs.

I'm a big fan of science and I do not take the Bible literally. But no matter how you spin it, even with our best science, nothing can explain the human soul, where it comes from, or where it goes when the vessel dies. Until science can explain that, we will have religous beliefs.

[Platapus]

antikristuseke,

A rather well written response. Good citations and a logical chain of thought without personal attacks.

[Platapus]

nothing can explain the human soul, where it comes from, or where it goes when the vessel dies. Until science can explain that, we will have religous beliefs.

Has it been demonstrated that we even have one? I would think that before anything can be proved as to where it came from and where it goes, it must first be established that it even exists in the first place.

[antikristuseke]

antikristuseke,

A rather well written response. Good citations and a logical chain of thought without personal attacks.

Thank you. I have to admit that i did punch my walls a few time and seriously considered smoking again, because I have been over all this several times on other forums and find it a little frustrating, but if even one person learns something or finds and interest in science it has been time worth spending.

[Onkel Neal]

Has it been demonstrated that we even have one? I would think that before anything can be proved as to where it came from and where it goes, it must first be established that it even exists in the first place.


Ok, then let me explain, by "soul", I am referring to consciousness.

[Platapus]

Ok, then let me explain, by "soul", I am referring to consciousness.

I think that would be a much better measurable area to focus on.

[Letum]

Ok, then let me explain, by "soul", I am referring to consciousness.


If you mean something distinct from the body, then you still need to give
reason for thinking it has existence.

Souls are things that exist, consciousness is a process that happens, but
does not have existence.

[NeonSamurai]

Evolution is both fact and theory, same for gravity. In science theory is basically a model with explains observations, a description of a process if you will. We understand far less of gravity than we do of evolution.

And those are observed instances of speciation since the two or more species are no longer capable of interbreeding. Definitions, these are important in science.

No it isn't, you do not properly understand the differences between scientific fact, theory, and hypothesis.

Scientific facts are direct observations of repeatable, reliable, verifiable events. The key thing is directly observable. You cannot directly observe gravity, or evolution, etc. only the effects which we assign gravity, evolution, etc as being responsible for.

Theory and hypothesis try to explain those facts (there are some differences between the two, usually hypothesis is an extension of an established theory).

You cannot directly observe gravity, evolution, or speciation (try reading that paper closer, even they refer to it as hypothesis). They are not scientific fact they are theories which are used to explain observed scientific fact. In all cases what you observe are effects which the theory attempts to explain why they happened.

Maybe this will make it more clear. You have a ball, you drop it, it falls to the ground and stays there. Now what did you observe? Did you see gravity? The only observable fact is the ball fell down from your hand and hit the ground. The theory as to why that happened is called the theory of gravity. Gravity is not a fact, the ball hitting the ground is the fact.

[goldorak]

Is it a "gigantic" problem in the US? I don't see how it is really slowing us down. Come on, say it. You want to say we're all stupid ;)
You only believe the earth orbits the sun because that's what you were taught. Did you ever try to prove it for yourself?


Well insofar as orbiting around the sun is a consequence of Newton's universal theory of gravitation and his law of dynamics (F = m* acceleration), yes I have proved that the earth orbits around the sun (the calculation is very easy and you get a differential equation whose solution is an ellipse were one of the focus corresponds to the sun).
Not only that but the result (an elliptic orbit) agrees with the data carefully registered over several years by Tycho Brahe and Kepler. But what did those guys know anyway ? :nope:
Do you want to negate newtons law of dynamics and calculus while we are at it ?
Damn I though we had left aristotelian physics in the past.

By the way I never said and I don't think that americans are stupid.
I just don't understand why Evolution theory is such a problem in the states.
You can surely understand my amazement at such a situation.

[Onkel Neal]

Souls are things that exist, consciousness is a process that happens, but
does not have existence.

Mine exists, I used it last week. ;)



I think that would be a much better measurable area to focus on.


Not sure at all how it is more measureable either as a soul or conscious existence, but you see what I'm getting at? Like antikristuke said, we know less about gravity, etc. There are so many things in our world that we cannot understand, we can barely grasp at, that I don't see how we can rule out God (in some form or another). Do I believe the world is 6000 years old just because some people interpret the Bible that way? No, I feel science has a better picture of this.

We think we know it all today, in 2009, with our current level of science...I bet in 1000 years people will look back at us and laugh.

I'm not saying there is or is not a supreme being or force in our universe, but if some people actually feel it and believe it, more power to them. Science explains a lot, more than I can understand, but it still does not prove God does not exist.

[Letum]

Mine exists, I used it last week.

There are lots of things that you can use, that don't exist.
To write this post I used language, for example.

Unless your a Platonic Idealist, language does not have existence.

To put it more technically; thinking consciousness is a thing that has
existence as a property is a category error. Consciousness is not in the
category of things that can have existence in the same way language
or potato farming can't have the property or existence.

[antikristuseke]

No it isn't, you do not properly understand the differences between scientific fact, theory, and hypothesis.

Scientific facts are direct observations of repeatable, reliable, verifiable events. The key thing is directly observable. You cannot directly observe gravity, or evolution, etc. only the effects which we assign gravity, evolution, etc as being responsible for.

Theory and hypothesis try to explain those facts (there are some differences between the two, usually hypothesis is an extension of an established theory).

You cannot directly observe gravity, evolution, or speciation (try reading that paper closer, even they refer to it as hypothesis). They are not scientific fact they are theories which are used to explain observed scientific fact. In all cases what you observe are effects which the theory attempts to explain why they happened.

Maybe this will make it more clear. You have a ball, you drop it, it falls to the ground and stays there. Now what did you observe? Did you see gravity? The only observable fact is the ball fell down from your hand and hit the ground. The theory as to why that happened is called the theory of gravity. Gravity is not a fact, the ball hitting the ground is the fact.

I see what you are getting at, but first we need to get definitions straight.

A fact is an observation of the empirical world.
A hypothesis is a provisional idea whose merit requires evaluation and thus can be either confirmed or disproved.
A theory is a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena.

Evolution is fact in the way that we have observed it's results and a theory in that we have an explanation to how (natural selection) and why (genetic mutation) it takes place, Evolution also makes testable predictions which can be used to falsify it. With gravity it is similar, but our understanding of the how and why is far more limited than our understanding of evolution.

[Letum]

A fact is an observation of the empirical world.

Correct.


Evolution is fact in the way that we have observed it's results[...]

Not so correct.
Observing results does not mean you have observed the thing it's self.

In fact, being non-physical, you could never observe evolution.
Another category error!

[antikristuseke]

Alrighty, I was mistaken in that regard, but evolution is still fact because we have observed the variation of allele frequencies in populations over time, which is exactly what evolution is.

[NeonSamurai]

Here is a good simple article explaining it all

http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistry101/a/lawtheory.htm

I don't fully agree with their definition for hypothesis, as often hypothesis are built upon theories for actual testing of the theory. Natural selection and speciation for example are both hypotheses based on the theory of evolution.

Alrighty, I was mistaken in that regard, but evolution is still fact because we have observed the variation of allele frequencies in populations over time, which is exactly what evolution is.

Nope it's still theory, remember it is used to explain why allele frequency variation may occur. Fact is directly observable only, you can directly observe the variation, but not evolution itself.

[Letum]

Alrighty, I was mistaken in that regard, but evolution is still fact because we have observed the variation of allele frequencies in populations over time, which is exactly what evolution is.

No, that's not exactly what evolution is. That's one of the results of
evolution.

You can't point at a falling apple and say it is exactly what gravity is. It is
just one result of gravity.

[Platapus]

What I was getting at is that consciousness in an animal can be measured. It can be both quantified and qualified by measuring brain signals. It can also be changed either through injury (coma), fatigue (sleep), or anesthesia or other means

But consciousness is not related to having a soul (at least how I understand how the term soul is often used)

I am not aware of any way a soul can be detected, no less measured.

I am not even sure I understand what a soul is.

[antikristuseke]

No, that's not exactly what evolution is. That's one of the results of
evolution.

You can't point at a falling apple and say it is exactly what gravity is. It is
just one result of gravity.

you are probably right, my mistake.

[nikimcbee]

Nikimcbee you fail to understand just what a scientific theory is.
I doubt you would even understand what the scientific method is all about. Man this is an age of scientific obscurantism.
Carl Sagan must be screaming in his grave.
:nope: :nope:

Thanks for telling me what understand and don't understand you arrogant ass:shifty:. Any other insults?

@ Haplo: I didn't mean you personally. Please don't take it as a personal insult. I'm more talking about some of those faux science shows that they show on cable now and then used by uber religious people to prove their point. I have my own personal beliefs and I'm not really interested in proving if their right or not. That's probably why there are so many different religions today:doh:.

Now the funny thing is is to watch 2 scientists debate a point ( see global warming) or the dinosaurs. The glass is half full, no it's half empty.:doh: I think it's all about the ego, " I'm right and you're wrong." Both science and religion have them.
Ultimately, I think there is something greater than us all out there, can I prove it? No. Do I care? I've got more important things to worry about.

See the thing is; I believe in evolution. The Bible (or other scripture) wasn't intended to be a science manual, but a set of instructions to prepare you for the afterlife. When I want/need science knowledge, there are plenty of good science books out there.

[goldorak]

Thanks for telling me what understand and don't understand you arrogant ass:shifty:. Any other insults?



No, your post warranted my answer.
You can't expect to write "stupid" things and think people are going to let it pass.
If your post was ironic, I failed to see the smilies, and therefore your post came across as ignorant. Ignorance is not a crime, but don't feel depressed when someone points it out.

:shucks:

[nikimcbee]

Nevermind, I'm getting my feathers all ruffled over nothing.

[onelifecrisis]

+1 to evolution is a theory not a fact.
+1 to looking up "closed minded" in the dictionary and finding "see creationism".

[Stealth Hunter]

Stealth-hunter - unfortunately the theory of evolution must be tied to the origin of the universe, simply because of the amount of time that evolution states it takes for the huge changes it postulates have occured throughout the history of the universe.

Wait- the origin of the universe? That's solely the Big Bang, an astronomical and cosmological event in history. Evolution, as far as the theory concerned, is strictly concerned with the biological sense of the term, not astronomical or cosmological affairs. Evolution of bacteriums, reptiles, amphibians, etc.

If it takes a billion years for a fish to develop lungs, then it and its evolving progeny has to have a place to swim for that billion years.

Right, but again, you're confusing the field of biology (and with it the ToE) with other scientific fields; studying the early earth itself on which life began would constitute geology more than biology simply because biology is the study of living organisms and their past, not so much just the environment on which they lived; that would more or less be closer related to geology.

If the earth can be demonstrated to not be a relatively stable and suitable platform for such a time frame, then water breathers could not have evolved into mammalian life forms on the earth, as is stated in the evolutionary theory.

No, the Theory of Evolution does not state that. Where did you get the absurd idea that "water breathers" just evolved willy-nilly into mammals? Furthermore, why do you think that they could not have evolved if it were given that the planet was "stable and suitable"? There exists such a thing as competition between species, you know, which is an influencing factor as far as evolution is concerned. Finally, the Theory of Evolution does not state either that the planet is "relatively stable and suitable". Of course, that's not the case, nor has it ever been.

Hard to evolve if the planet your on doesn't exist...

Not if you're on an asteroid or comet. Which reminds me, it was just a few months ago that we confirmed, for the first time in history, that amino acids- the very building blocks for life- were and are definitively present inside and on the surface of comets within the vacuum of space.

[CaptainHaplo]

NikiMcbee - I took no insult and knew you were not singling me out, my friend!

Stealthunter - my point to you I think you may have missed. It is simply that we should look at the origin of the planet to first determine if the planet itself has existed and provided a suitable environment for evolution since evolution requires a timeline of billions of years. evolution, on earth, cannot occur if the earth was either A) Not around, or B) not suitable environmentally.

[Skybird]

How do you debunk something thats no even a scientific theory ? :dead:
Treating Creationism on the same level of any other kind of scientific theory only legitimizes their view.

That has been my point in here from my first posting on. ;) Maybe we should start a rumble over who posted it first, to add some more fun to this thread! :haha:

On NeonSamurai's and antikristuseke's exchange over the term "evolution", this: it derives from biology and dals with the continuous developement of species that appear on basis of the design of earlier lifeforms whose genetic design undergoes changes. in this, the term evolution and natural selection cannot be separated from each other. biologic evolution means natural selection, natural selection means biologic evolution. All biologic phenomenons must be assessed in relation to this most fundamental theory in the field of biology. Formally, it is devided into three categories, or fields of interest:
1.) macro evolution, meaning the appearing of new species and orders of specimen, and subordinate classes and categories,
2.) micro evolution, dealing with the chnages and devleopement within a given species, and forming the field of research of population genetics, and
3.) the molecular, genetic and embryologic basis of evolution, dealing with how molecular changes in the genetic material influence form and function of an organism in a given environemnt, increasing or decreasing it's survivability and fitness in that ecosystem.

That evolution is always linear, always irreversible, and always constant, is being questioned at the present time. Life forms of various evolutionary phases do not exist one after another, but can exist parallel to each other. Changes can be in adding or deleting features, but chnaging the feature snot necessarily always mean an optimization of the fitness of the design, but in fact can mean the neutralising of a former advanatge of the design. Random mutations play a role. There are alternative evolution theories to that of Darwin (Savanna-Ape-Theory), namely the Theory of Neoteny (which is historically interesting, but plays no big role today anymore), and the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis which claims it can explain some details of the specifics of man better than Darwin's Savanna-Theory.

None of these three theories, Savanna, Neoteny and Aquatic Ape, are complete models explaining all and every details of man's design.

Unclear is the value of exotic theories like Rupert Sheldrake's Morphogenetic Fields. But at least it is fascinating. :) sheldrake has ofered a big ammount of money for evidence that proves his theory to be wrong, and did that long time ago. As far as I know he still is the owner of that money. Oh those British. Typical. :lol:



Letum, Neal,

that souls exist is a metaphysical assumption which one can believe - or not. Buddha for example explicitly denied the existence of individual souls when gotten asked for it. And what I say? I say: I do not know. Nobody does. All we believe to know, is just knoweldge we only believe to have. But nevertheless we just believe, and do not know. No clever mindgame we play does change that.

And at the risk that I fell victim to some linguistic trap or misunderstood translation: that consciousness can be "measured" both in quantity and quality, is new to me - both as a psychologist and practitioner and teacher of meditation. You can observe results of consciousness, and draw correlations between activity in brain areas, and the individual's subjective mental status, and you can measure electric potentials in the brain without knowing what the single set of impulses does exactly contain in information; and you can stimulate brain regions with electrodes and activate the physiological reaction patterns belonging to your sensual equipment. But can you read the thoiughts of an individual from an EEG diagram? Cn you dose the electric stimulus in such a way that it doe snot only create a feeling of being hungry, but a certain landscape as an ikmage to the inner eye, this landscape and no other? To say one could measure quantity and quality of consciousness, is a claim a bit too big, even more when considering a brain that got drugged, is in coma, REM phase or deep meditation - we only have scratched the surface regarding this big, wide, deep ocean the human brain, and the ohenomeneon of consciousness is. It becomes even more complicated when introducing the terms "awareness".

I would say it different: you can observe consciousness, your own and that of others, in action. Stay on the safe side and leave it to that statement! ;)

I base on the translation of "consciousness" being "Bewußtsein".

[OneToughHerring]

IBut no matter how you spin it, even with our best science, nothing can explain the human soul, where it comes from, or where it goes when the vessel dies. Until science can explain that, we will have religous beliefs.

What exactly do you mean with the "human soul"? Concrete examples, please.

[Shearwater]

Discussing what the 'human soul' exactly means and/or is would be more than enough material for a separate thread.

[Onkel Neal]

There are lots of things that you can use, that don't exist.
To write this post I used language, for example.

Unless your a Platonic Idealist, language does not have existence.

To put it more technically; thinking consciousness is a thing that has
existence as a property is a category error. Consciousness is not in the
category of things that can have existence in the same way language
or potato farming can't have the property or existence.

Are you trying to say that the English language does not exist?

I would say that language is a fact, and you said facts exist.

I think therefore I am. That idea exists.



I am not even sure I understand what a soul is.

It probably means something different to some people, in my book it's basically the "person", their mental being.

[onelifecrisis]

But no matter how you spin it, even with our best science, nothing can explain the human soul, where it comes from, or where it goes when the vessel dies. Until science can explain that, we will have religous beliefs.

In other words, religions will exist as long as people are unable to face their own mortality.

[Reece]

Your soul is what make you unique to everyone else! With a billion people in the world you are not looking through any of their eyes, even identical twins have separate souls, it's what makes you you!:yep: Your body may die but your soul lives on!:up: "MY Belief":yep:

[Torplexed]

"Gimmie yer stupid soul!"

Sorry...had an MST3K moment. :oops:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QI5GpCAOFDk/SnwjCBoNOtI/AAAAAAAABp4/DRoRfpnnK-U/s400/Soultaker.jpg

[Letum]

Are you trying to say that the English language does not exist?

I would say that language is a fact, and you said facts exist.

I think therefore I am. That idea exists.

No, the English language is real, but it doesn't exist.

It's not physical; you can't put it in a wheelbarrow and there is no reason
to think there is Platonic world of forms in which language exists as
legitimately as rocks do in another non-physical world.

[Onkel Neal]

In other words, religions will exist as long as people are unable to face their own mortality.

Perhaps. But then again, fear of mortality does not mean transcendance is not possible. ;)

No, the English language is real, but it doesn't exist.

It's not physical; you can't put it in a wheelbarrow and there is no reason
to think there is Platonic world of forms in which language exists as
legitimately as rocks do in another non-physical world.

Hmm...and to think English is my primary language yet it does not exist!

Your soul is what make you unique to everyone else! With a billion people in the world you are not looking through any of their eyes, even identical twins have separate souls, it's what makes you you!:yep:

Yeah, that's kinda what I mean. :yep:

"Gimmie yer stupid soul!"

Sorry...had an MST3K moment. :oops:



Haha, man, I need to rent some of those from Netflix, they make great party videos!!:rock:

That has been my point in here from my first posting on. ;) Maybe we should start a rumble over who posted it first, to add some more fun to this thread! :haha:

On NeonSamurai's and antikristuseke's exchange over the term "evolution", this: it derives from biology and dals with the continuous developement of species that appear on basis of the design of earlier lifeforms whose genetic design undergoes changes. in this, the term evolution and natural selection cannot be separated from each other. biologic evolution means natural selection, natural selection means biologic evolution. All biologic phenomenons must be assessed in relation to this most fundamental theory in the field of biology. Formally, it is devided into three categories, or fields of interest:
1.) macro evolution, meaning the appearing of new species and orders of specimen, and subordinate classes and categories,
2.) micro evolution, dealing with the chnages and devleopement within a given species, and forming the field of research of population genetics, and
3.) the molecular, genetic and embryologic basis of evolution, dealing with how molecular changes in the genetic material influence form and function of an organism in a given environemnt, increasing or decreasing it's survivability and fitness in that ecosystem.

That evolution is always linear, always irreversible, and always constant, is being questioned at the present time. Life forms of various evolutionary phases do not exist one after another, but can exist parallel to each other. Changes can be in adding or deleting features, but chnaging the feature snot necessarily always mean an optimization of the fitness of the design, but in fact can mean the neutralising of a former advanatge of the design. Random mutations play a role. There are alternative evolution theories to that of Darwin (Savanna-Ape-Theory), namely the Theory of Neoteny (which is historically interesting, but plays no big role today anymore), and the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis which claims it can explain some details of the specifics of man better than Darwin's Savanna-Theory.

None of these three theories, Savanna, Neoteny and Aquatic Ape, are complete models explaining all and every details of man's design.

Unclear is the value of exotic theories like Rupert Sheldrake's Morphogenetic Fields. But at least it is fascinating. :) sheldrake has ofered a big ammount of money for evidence that proves his theory to be wrong, and did that long time ago. As far as I know he still is the owner of that money. Oh those British. Typical. :lol:



See, I can tell you know a lot more about this subject than me. I never studied evolution, other than the top level synopsis that most people are familiar with (and I have two of his books in my library, part of the Easton Press 100 Greatest books, but never have gotten around to reading them yet). Darwin's theories make perfect sense to me, and lord knows he spent many years working on his concepts and making observations.


Letum, Neal,

that souls exist is a metaphysical assumption which one can believe - or not. Buddha for example explicitly denied the existence of individual souls when gotten asked for it. And what I say? I say: I do not know. Nobody does. All we believe to know, is just knoweldge we only believe to have. But nevertheless we just believe, and do not know. No clever mindgame we play does change that.




(you can tell I love the multiquote feature here :88))

Awesome, I agree, I don't really know. I just know what I believe...and that changes constantly.

[onelifecrisis]

Perhaps. But then again, fear of mortality does not mean transcendance is not possible. ;)

Granted. Depending on how transcendence is defined, one could say that it is possible before death; indeed, one could say it is only possible before death.

Please, someone in here tell me I'm not the only one who thinks that the New Testament is an excellent book of metaphors that many people have (mistakenly) interpreted literally? We're all born into a garden of Eden. We all eat from the tree of knowledge and lose our innocence. We all experince hell when we do something bad, and heaven when we do something good. Come on, it's not rocket science.

[clive bradbury]

A long, but worthwhile, read, for those who think that the human soul exists:

http://ebonmusings.org/atheism/ghost.html

Might just challenge some of your conceptions...but hey, maybe not. Can't do with another brick removed from God's wall, eh?

[Stealth Hunter]

A long, but worthwhile, read, for those who think that the human soul exists:

http://ebonmusings.org/atheism/ghost.html

Might just challenge some of your conceptions...

Like they'll bother taking it seriously.:nope:

People will believe what they want, despite contradicting evidence or an astonishing LACK of evidence for what they believe.

[Sailor Steve]

THE SOUL

What is it? We have conciousness. We have self-awareness. Is the soul real, the part of us that lives on after we die? Or is it simply the fact that we can see the end ahead and don't want to believe that we actually stop at that point.

GOD

Does god exist? Were we actually created by a supreme being? Or do we see a universe so much greater in scope than we are and can't imagine that it wasn't made by someone else?

I don't know. But I see no evidence one way or the other.

[LiveGoat]

Mullet Boy: "Led Zeppelin had it wrong. There is no stairway to heaven."

Ken Doll Boy: "Is Sabbath wrong too, maaan?!"



"Gimmie yer stupid soul!"

Sorry...had an MST3K moment. :oops:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QI5GpCAOFDk/SnwjCBoNOtI/AAAAAAAABp4/DRoRfpnnK-U/s400/Soultaker.jpg

[antikristuseke]

I really like some of the points brought up - but so far, all I have seen is "counterpoints" to why a young earth can't be accurate - but not a single post pointing out why evolution is a fact. Cmon people - a debate is an open forum to present both sides, not just poke holes in one. Lets have some arguements that point out the other side. If no one puts any out, then some may conclude that the "evolution" camp has no proof at all......


Are you trying to shift the burden of proof? Regardless I would like you to adress my points in post #48 (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=1207106&postcount=48). But just to humour you I will provide you with several pieces of evidence for evolution and common decent.

1. Endogenous retroviruses
Endogenous retroviruses are molecular remnants of a past parasitic viral infection. Occasionally, copies of a retrovirus genome are found in its host's genome, and these retroviral gene copies are called endogenous retroviral sequences. Retroviruses (like the AIDS virus or HTLV1, which causes a form of leukemia) make a DNA copy of their own viral genome and insert it into their host's genome. If this happens to a germ line cell (i.e. the sperm or egg cells) the retroviral DNA will be inherited by descendants of the host. Again, this process is rare and fairly random, so finding retrogenes in identical chromosomal positions of two different species indicates common ancestry.
Figure 1 (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/images/retrovirus.gif)Human endogenous retrovirus K (HERV-K) insertions in identical chromosomal locations in various primates (Reprinted from Lebedev et al. 2000, © 2000, with permission from Elsevier Science)

2. Transitional forms some creationists claim do not exist, incomplete list in following article.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#morphological_intermediates

3. Anatomical vestiges
Some of the most renowned evidence for evolution are the various nonfunctional or rudimentary vestigial characters, both anatomical and molecular, that are found throughout biology. A vestige is defined, independently of evolutionary theory, as a reduced and rudimentary structure compared to the same complex structure in other organisms. Vestigial characters, if functional, perform relatively simple, minor, or inessential functions using structures that were clearly designed for other complex purposes. Though many vestigial organs have no function, complete non-functionality is not a requirement for vestigiality.
For example, wings are very complex anatomical structures specifically adapted for powered flight, yet ostriches have flightless wings. The vestigial wings of ostriches may be used for relatively simple functions, such as balance during running and courtship displays—a situation akin to hammering tacks with a computer keyboard. The specific complexity of the ostrich wing indicates a function which it does not perform, and it performs functions incommensurate with its complexity. Ostrich wings are not vestigial because they are useless structures per se, nor are they vestigial simply because they have different functions compared to wings in other birds. Rather, what defines ostrich wings as vestigial is that they are rudimentary wings which are useless as wings.

These are just three, there are more, loads more. Now for some evidence that the Earth is older than what you claim it is.

1. Radiometric dating

The oldest rocks which have been found so far (on the Earth) date to about 3.8 to 3.9 billion years ago (by several radiometric dating methods). Some of these rocks are sedimentary, and include minerals which are themselves as old as 4.1 to 4.2 billion years. Rocks of this age are relatively rare, however rocks that are at least 3.5 billion years in age have been found on North America, Greenland, Australia, Africa, and Asia.

While these values do not compute an age for the Earth, they do establish a lower limit (the Earth must be at least as old as any formation on it). This lower limit is at least concordant with the independently derived figure of 4.55 billion years for the Earth's actual age.

The most direct means for calculating the Earth's age is a Pb/Pb isochron age, derived from samples of the Earth and meteorites. This involves measurement of three isotopes of lead (Pb-206, Pb-207, and either Pb-208 or Pb-204). A plot is constructed of Pb-206/Pb-204 versus Pb-207/Pb-204.
Most of the other measurements for the age of the Earth rest upon calculating an age for the solar system by dating objects which are expected to have formed with the planets but are not geologically active (and therefore cannot erase evidence of their formation), such as meteorites.

Figure 2
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/2198/figure1.jpg

2. Ice core dating

The Vostok Ice-Core was collected in East Antarctica by the Russian Antarctic expedition. The Vostok Ice-Core is 2,083 meters long and was collected in two portions: 1) 0 - 950 m in 1970-1974, 2) 950 - 2083 m in 1982-1983. The total depth of the ice sheet from which the core was collected is approximately 3,700 meters.

The ice core was sliced into 1.5-2.0 meter segments. A discontinuous series sampled every 25 meters and a continuous series from 1,406 to 2,803 meters were then sent in solid form to Grenoble, France for further analysis.

At Grenoble the ice was put into clean stainless steel containers. The samples were crushed and then melted with the gases given off collected and saved for further analysis. The melt water was tested for chemical composition and then electrolysised.

The methods used in the determination of the ages include 18O/16O isotopic analysis, independent ice-flow calculations, comparison with other ice cores, paleoclimatic comparison, comparison with deep sea cores, 10Be/9Be isotopic analysis, deuterium/hydrogen isotopic analysis, comparison with marine climatic record, CO2 correspondances between dated ice-cores and CO2 correspondances with dated oceanic cores.

The results determined from these various samples were consistent between the continuous and discontinuous slices within the sections that overlapped. They were also consistent with Greenland ice-cores, other Antarctic ice-cores, dated volcanic records, deep sea cores, and paleoclimatic evidence.

While unable to provide specific dates (within a millenia), the analysis show definate evidence of the the last two ice ages. Using the methods listed above the bottom of the ice-core was laid down 160,000 +- 15,000 years ago. It should be noted that all of the methods listed above were consistent with the above results.

From the data gathered from the Vostok ice-core indicates that the minimum age of the earth is 160,000 +- 15,000 years. Furthermore there exists approximately 33% of additional ice below the core sample which would hold a disproportionate number of years due to thinning of the ice layers under the tremendous pressure of the ice above it.

To maintain an age for the earth of 50,000 years, one would need to describe a mechanism that allows more than 2 false ice layers to form per year. It should be noted that one also needs to describe why this mechanism has ceased to function in historic times since the Vostok ice-core demonstrates a number of the historically recorded volcanism at the correct periods of time.

Refrences
1. C. Lorius et al., NATURE 316 (1985) 591-596.
2. F. Yiou et al., NATURE 316 (1985) 616-617.
3. J. Jouzel et al., NATURE 329 (1987) 403-408.
4. J.M. Barnola et al., NATURE 329 (1987) 408-414.
5. van Nostrands' SCIENTIFIC DICTIONARY
6. THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
7. E. Wolff, GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE 59 (1987) 73-77.
8. Julie M. Palais OCEANUS 29 (Winter 86/87) 55-60.
9. W. Dansgaard et al., SCIENCE 218 (1982) 1273-1277.
10. C.U. Hammer et al., NATURE 288 (1980) 230-235.


I could go on here but I am tied and in need of sleep.

[Shearwater]

"Philosophendampfer" :DL

[Stealth Hunter]

THE SOUL

What is it?

The embodiment of the immaterial part of a person within the person's flesh; which is kind of self-contradictory as far as the embodiment/immaterial part is concerned. But anyway...

We have conciousness. We have self-awareness.

Consciousness is merely a cognitive state of awareness, needless to clarify on the latter part of the quote as such.

Is the soul real, the part of us that lives on after we die? Or is it simply the fact that we can see the end ahead and don't want to believe that we actually stop at that point.

Well in the sense of it being self-contradictory (again, the whole "it's immaterial but can manifest in a material entity" thing), no, it's not real. Because it's logically contradictory at the same time, in the same way that you cannot have iron-gold or a bed made of sleep (as I used for previous examples), nor can you have a cubical sphere. Etc.

GOD

Does god exist?

So long as people keep assigning these gods characteristics, so can we keep disproving the plausibility of their existence (and thusly existence as a whole). For example, as I previously mentioned, most mainstream religious to date (Islam, Christianity, Judaism, to name a few) believe in a supreme deity, who is omnipotent and omniscient- among other things. These two are the most prominent ones people generally mention, however. These two in a single being are contradictory- logically so. Ergo, they cannot and do not exist (the beings, that is, who are said to possess these characteristics). There are a number of people who claim that paradoxes are actually formed, not contradictions. This is by definition, however, incorrect; it's a case of logical contradictions.

Were we actually created by a supreme being? Or do we see a universe so much greater in scope than we are and can't imagine that it wasn't made by someone else?

Well to question one, the previous paragraph applies. As far as question two is concerned, I might actually bother to sit down and try to find a census from religious folks on why they believe in what they believe. Might actually be interesting.

I don't know. But I see no evidence one way or the other.

Well actually, the lack of evidence for these supreme beings IS in fact evidence against their existence, so it doesn't swing "one way or the other". Furthermore, logical contradictions in the gods of such religions as Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are the final nails in the coffin; if they're contradictory, their existence is impossible (and that's not up for dispute, that logical contradictions within something make it's existence or plausibility impossible on all levels within this realm I mean). But again, people will believe what they want to- despite what reality really is showing us and how it really works.

[Stealth Hunter]

"Philosophendampfer" :DL

Sommekampfer.:D

[Tribesman]

2. Transitional forms some creationists claim do not exist
You waste your time with a scientific approach.
Forget mammal/reptile, bird/reptile transitional forms.
Think Beaver, it is a mammal that is also a fish, plus of course the Puffin which is a bird that is also a fish.

But on a more serious note, in relation to points 2&3 in your post. Salamanders, surely they alone would be enough to further frustrate a creationist.
Though the best way to frustrate a creationist is with the scripture they claim is correct.

[Stealth Hunter]

I lol'd at this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vte_K7YHMmM

Next time go to the doctor, you moron. Well- there won't be a next time, but the moral of the story is that the supernatural will not save you.

[Platapus]

I wonder if a "soul" is only what we perceive in other people.

Meaning that even if a person dies, their "soul" (our perception of them) continues.

[Tribesman]

I wonder if a "soul" is only what we perceive in other people.


Damn, I thought Booker T & the MGs would have scrambled those perceptions

[antikristuseke]

You waste your time with a scientific approach.
Forget mammal/reptile, bird/reptile transitional forms.
Think Beaver, it is a mammal that is also a fish, plus of course the Puffin which is a bird that is also a fish.


Ohyeah I know all about those "transitionals" some creationists ask for, even though if we did find a ****ing crocoduck that would falsify evolution on the spot.

[Skybird]

See, I can tell you know a lot more about this subject than me.

Not really, antikristuseke gives me the impression to know much more about it. I have just read three or four books of popular science on biology and evolution of life on earth - with the accent on "popular science". ;)

[OGjimKenobi]

After reading through some of this thread I have to say it is quite refreshing to see this debate take place with so little vitriol and anger involved. In all honesty however, I have to admit that while I am perfectly capable of having this discussion in a friendly non-combative tone, I have little to no intellectual respect for any person who believes that some kind of supernatural being from beyond created our Earth and indeed the entire universe a mere 5 or 6 thousand years ago.

I've seen comments claiming that coming to a conclusion based on incredible amounts of firm, testable, solid scientific data requires the same level of faith as believing in fictional stories created by savage desert people over a thousand years ago. I'm sorry but there is a very clear difference in each of these approaches and to equate the two is dishonest and misleading.

I think what is required is a few additional rules before we can honestly continue this debate if we truly hope to learn something by having this discussion.

Actually only one additional rule is truly required and I will explain why.

The world of science is vast and full of many characters. Scientists are people just like you and me and often do become wrapped up in trying to prove a theory. Sometimes even to the point of acknowledging only that evidence which supports their theory while ignoring all evidence which puts it in doubt. That is why we have the peer review process in the scientific community which is designed to make sure only the strongest theories, which have withstood the most amount of scrutiny will be accepted as true and real science.

This is achieved by rigorous examination by the scientific community of any scientific research that is submitted for the peer reviewed process. The work is examined and tested by highly educated professionals in the field and if the research is found to be accurate it is published as officially scientifically reviewed research and can be trusted as the best data available on the subject at that time.

Without the peer review process I could put forth any ridiculous, crackpot theory I want to come up with as real science. I could say that clouds are composed of dragon farts or the Earth is actually only a few thousand years old or any other unfounded simpleton nonsense I may decide to come up with.

That is why in order to ensure the validity of the discussion I propose we initiate a new rule requiring all evidence presented by either side to include references to peer reviewed research.

Naturally, Creationism Theology, much like voodoo or witchcraft, has never been verified as real science by making it through the peer reviewed process, so please keep this in mind while reading some outlandish conclusions I have seen Creationists present as "evidence" against the process of evolution.

So how bout it, who thinks the rule should be added and followed from this point forward?

[Rockin Robbins]

Evolution was created!:D

[Rockin Robbins]

Peer review is also a flawed process, serving mainly to suppress legitimate research, while it does actually prevent some crackpot pseudo-science from publication. Most scientific innovation takes place in spite of, not because of the peer review process.

New science is developed through the process of heresy. Heresy is the specific target of peer review. But according to myself and Stephen David Ross in Metaphysical Aporia and Philosophical Heresy,
If our convictions are strong, it is because science, art and politics are able to transform themselves through heresy. In the case of art, heresy includes the return to superseded forms. When variation and novelty themselves become the orthodox, heresy requires older orthodoxies. The heretical side of reason disrupts even the norm of heresy. It follows that reason is as deeply manifested in conflict as in agreement. It demands heresy as well as consensus, demands that every rule be challenged, including the rule of heresy.Peer review, for the very purpose of squashing heresy, keeps heresy honest and so functions as its own kind of heresy: one that should be scanned with a jaundiced eye and analyzed for agenda-driven behavior.

The idea of Godless science is one that Newton would have roundly and not politely scorned!

[antikristuseke]

Rockin Robbins, peer review suppresses legitimate research in what way exactly?
And what sir Newton thought about god is completely irrelevant to the discussion and it is a logical fallacy known as an appeal to authority. Theories have to stand on their own merits.

[CaptainHaplo]

I havent forgotten this thread - good to see the discussion is continuing. Am researching what I can when my mind isn't fuzzy.

[Sailor Steve]

Evolution was created!:D
Creation has evolved!:O:

[Sailor Steve]

Theories have to stand on their own merits.
I agree; and that includes anything that is proposed as science, no matter what the title given to it. If it isn't examined and reexamined from every angle, it ain't science!

[Skybird]

I agree; and that includes anything that is proposed as science, no matter what the title given to it. If it isn't examined and reexamined from every angle, it ain't science!

Science asks: could it be true what the temporary theory so far says?

Religion asks: why is it true what the unerring dogma says?

That describes pretty well evolutionists' and creationists' approach as well.

[Shearwater]

Science asks: could it be true what the temporary theory so far says?

Religion asks: why is it true what the unerring dogma says?

That describes pretty well evolutionists' and creationists' approach as well.

I guess there's a bit more to it than that ;)
Science may ask for truth as , but it's rather concerned with providing the most probable explanation of the (material) world based on evidence using traceable methods. It acquires data and draws conlcusions, but data as such can always be only a fragment of 'truth', which as such isn't a scientific, but rather a philosophical (or, more precisely, epistemological) concept.
Dogma isn't derived from religion as such, it's rather a binding interpretation of a given subject (e.g. in Christian religion a binding interpretation of the Bible). It implies the presence of at least some sort of clerical hierarchy that can both provide such an interpretation and see to its enforcement, and hierarchy in that sense doesn't necessarily exist in all religions (and not in all parts of Christendom).

[Rockin Robbins]

Rockin Robbins, peer review suppresses legitimate research in what way exactly?
And what sir Newton thought about god is completely irrelevant to the discussion and it is a logical fallacy known as an appeal to authority. Theories have to stand on their own merits.

Things that people disagree with are ALWAYS deemed irrelevant!:har:

I don't know. Ask Harlton Arp, astrophysicist. In 1960 he was awarded the Helen B Warner Prize for Astronomy by the American Astronomical Society. This is traditionally given to an astronomer making significant contribution to the science over the past five year period, and is considered a pretty ironclad endorsement by "big science."

Arp was one of a handful of scientists in the world with large blocks of observing time for the Mt Polomar, Mt Wilson and McDonald Observatory telescopes, more evidence of his inside position within astrophysics. However, Mr Arp decided to assemble an atlas of peculiar galaxies. His reasoning was that little was known about the evolution of galaxies through time and a photographic survey of galaxies, especially those of unusual form, would be helpful in connecting the dots.

Unfortunately, those photographs and the inescapable conclusions Arp drew from them brought him into direct conflict with the cadre of Big Bang and redshift theory physicists who ran Big Science Astronomical and who in large part still do. They had their entire careers tied up in the validity of certain theories. Their income, prestige and social standing within the scientific community depended on being right. You see, science is first a political structure, and THEN a classical scientific structure.

Arp had many dozens of photos showing something deemed impossible by the astrophysics establishment. Their dogma was that redshift is purely the effect of recessional velocity: the higher the redshift, the further the distance. Arp's photos clearly showed high and lower redshift bodies in physical contact with one another, and high redshift bodies in front of lower redshift objects. Armed with ten years' worth of evidence, Arp presented his findings.

Nothing. No publication. No reaction. His observing time at Mt Polomar and McDonald observatories was taken away (can't have any MORE heretical photos coming out! Who KNOWS what that crazy man will destroy next). His papers were denied publication. Harlton Arp was effectively banned from American astronomy. He essentially fled to Europe and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, where he spent the rest of his career. A good friend of mine, closely tied to Mr Arp, retired to Florida, where he was instrumental in jump starting my interest in amateur astronomy and from whom I learned the story.

Arp still maintains that his findings, although modified, of course, by subsequent discoveries is basically valid. In this story, from his website (http://www.haltonarp.com/articles/research_with_Fred), he recounts the day when the brightest star in the astronomical sky, Fred Hoyle, came to visit and subsequently delivered an address to the Seattle Meeting of the American Astronomical Society, April 1972. This keynote address was considered the most significant event in Big Astronomy for the year. The address was traditionally printed in its entirety in the Astrophysical Jounal. Not that year. Fred Hoyle had jumped into bed with this prostitute, completely endorsing his line of research and the news would never see the light of day. Too many prominent luminaries in Big Science were threatened.

Science is first political. Then, if possible, it considers your lofty objective scientific principles. Arp is just the example I am most familiar with. But he is far from alone.

Sanjay Gupta, MD, in his book, Cheating Death, relates the catch 22 position of the use of failed CPR techniques and the reluctance of the American Heart Association and American Medical Association to adopt clearly superior techniques. The present CPR technique is a three part strategy: breathing, compressions, defibrillation. Recent studies have shown that the breathing has no measurable value, defibrillation is killing people, not because it doesn't work, but because too much time is being taken with it.

Actually the most important part of CPR turns out to be chest compressions. Dr Mike Kellum had a better idea, born from pig studies, which found that compressions alone, without mouth to mouth resuscitation, was much more effective in saving lives. He went to Mercy Hospital System in rural Arizona, where the emergency services director was fed up.

"Why are we spending time trying to bring no one back to life?" For the previous three years, Mercy Hospital System EMTs had responded to 92 cases of witnessed cardiac arrests, saving only 19, five of which ended up with serious brain damage.

They bucked the AMA and AHA, changing their CPR method to two hundred chest compressions, followed by a single shock from the defibrillator. No breaths at all during the procedure. They did insert what Gupta refers to as "a small device inserted into the mouth to pump in additional oxygen," in other words, to ensure that the patient was able to obtain oxygen, but that was all. The proceedure was 200 compressions, 1 shock, 200 compressions, 1 shock, 200 compressions, 1 shock. That's 600 hard, fast compressions in the regimen.

In 2006, four years after this policy was instituted, FINALLY the American Journal of Medicine could ignore them no longer. Finally, the rest of the country could be told that survival rates without brain damage had gone from 15% to 48% just from the institution of this heresy.

Tell me. Did YOU know about this? Do YOU think it was warranted to sacrifice the lives of two thirds of savable cardiac patients for four years in defense of certain luminaries' careers? How does your local health authority conduct CPR today. Will they kill your father or grandfather or you because people whose responsibility it is to disseminate cutting edge scientific discovery are not doing so in defense of their position and influence?

Heresy is a threat. It is also a promise that the future will be better than today. Embracing that better future means a carefully considered embracing of heresy. Challenge of authority is always the first step toward progress.

[karamazovnew]

Some years ago I was struck by the thought that not all people are Christians. I was about 12 and until that time, I thought the budhists, muslims, hindus and all the others were just different Christians, or potential Christians. People still in the dark that can't wait to hear about Jesus. Then it dawned on me that billions of people have never read the Bible and don't give a damn about it. They all have their notion of how the world was created. So when you say "Creation" you invariably link it to the Bible.

But how about the Hindu version? Why don't we debate that? Or the ancient greek one? Just because Zeus is no longer worshiped does that mean that he wasn't for real? Or how about the mayans? So many of us believe that they knew when the world would end. Maybe they knew when the world started. But I have no doubt that you'd start laughing the moment you hear about the Earth Crocodile or the Golden Turtle.

What's funny is that most religions have incorporated astronomical truths into alegories (I'd say astrological but to my surprise, no.). Most religions have a pretty scientific approach to how the world was created. The Bible however was written long ago in a small and insignificant country that was too often ravaged by invaders for the poor scholars to do anything but pray... Really now, how many ancient jewish astronomers or mathematicians do we know about? Why would that be important?

Because the Church burned Giordano Bruno alive and almost did the same thing with Galilei and Copernicus. Yes but now we live in a different era, you might say. We know that the world is round now. Yes, but only because you've seen it on TV. Without images from space there'd still be some that believe the world is flat just because the Bible doesn't say that the world is round.

Fortunately, the church no longer holds science back. We have the protestants to thank for that. People like Newton who were deeply religious, who looked at facts and changed their view of God according to new evidence, always searching more and more. While it's not a fact that God exists or any form of him ever did, it is a fact that without God we would not have any reason to search at all. Existence itself would have no meaning, regardless of being created in 6 days or in the Big Bang. But should there by one out there, he just seems more like a Big Banger to me. :haha:

[Rockin Robbins]

I'm afraid that the history is much more complicated than "Catholics bad, Protestants good." In England of the 1500s and 1600s, both were rotten to the core and killed people with the regard you give to swatting a mosquito.

Their persecution of each other made Roman persecution of early Christians look like Mardi Gras.

[August]

If there is one central tenent to any monotheistic religion is that God is perfect and man is fallible. All religions, being constructs of man, are therefore fallible as well.

I find those who claim to speak for God as absurd as those who claim that God does not exist. Both are shining examples of Mans arrogance.

[Platapus]

August,

That brings up the important question about the differences between "Spirituality" and "Religion"

To me they are totally different, and in many aspects, independent of each other.

Others will disagree though.

[August]

August,

That brings up the important question about the differences between "Spirituality" and "Religion"

To me they are totally different, and in many aspects, independent of each other.

Others will disagree though.

Well I for one would be interested in hearing what you see those differences to be. Spirituality is a religions main reason for existence but certainly not the only one.

[Reece]

If there was no spirit to be saved then there is no point to any religion, so you may as well eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die!!:03:

[AngusJS]

If there is one central tenent to any monotheistic religion is that God is perfect and man is fallible. All religions, being constructs of man, are therefore fallible as well.

I find those who claim to speak for God as absurd as those who claim that God does not exist. Both are shining examples of Mans arrogance.But it's not a shining example of Man's arrogance to claim it exists in the first place?

Is there anything arrogant about saying god's existence is not proven, and its existence can be doubted until shown otherwise?

[antikristuseke]

Things that people disagree with are ALWAYS deemed irrelevant!:har:

I don't know. Ask Harlton Arp, astrophysicist. In 1960 he was awarded the Helen B Warner Prize for Astronomy by the American Astronomical Society. This is traditionally given to an astronomer making significant contribution to the science over the past five year period, and is considered a pretty ironclad endorsement by "big science."

Arp was one of a handful of scientists in the world with large blocks of observing time for the Mt Polomar, Mt Wilson and McDonald Observatory telescopes, more evidence of his inside position within astrophysics. However, Mr Arp decided to assemble an atlas of peculiar galaxies. His reasoning was that little was known about the evolution of galaxies through time and a photographic survey of galaxies, especially those of unusual form, would be helpful in connecting the dots.

Unfortunately, those photographs and the inescapable conclusions Arp drew from them brought him into direct conflict with the cadre of Big Bang and redshift theory physicists who ran Big Science Astronomical and who in large part still do. They had their entire careers tied up in the validity of certain theories. Their income, prestige and social standing within the scientific community depended on being right. You see, science is first a political structure, and THEN a classical scientific structure.

Arp had many dozens of photos showing something deemed impossible by the astrophysics establishment. Their dogma was that redshift is purely the effect of recessional velocity: the higher the redshift, the further the distance. Arp's photos clearly showed high and lower redshift bodies in physical contact with one another, and high redshift bodies in front of lower redshift objects. Armed with ten years' worth of evidence, Arp presented his findings.

Nothing. No publication. No reaction. His observing time at Mt Polomar and McDonald observatories was taken away (can't have any MORE heretical photos coming out! Who KNOWS what that crazy man will destroy next). His papers were denied publication. Harlton Arp was effectively banned from American astronomy. He essentially fled to Europe and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, where he spent the rest of his career. A good friend of mine, closely tied to Mr Arp, retired to Florida, where he was instrumental in jump starting my interest in amateur astronomy and from whom I learned the story.

Arp still maintains that his findings, although modified, of course, by subsequent discoveries is basically valid. In this story, from his website (http://www.haltonarp.com/articles/research_with_Fred), he recounts the day when the brightest star in the astronomical sky, Fred Hoyle, came to visit and subsequently delivered an address to the Seattle Meeting of the American Astronomical Society, April 1972. This keynote address was considered the most significant event in Big Astronomy for the year. The address was traditionally printed in its entirety in the Astrophysical Jounal. Not that year. Fred Hoyle had jumped into bed with this prostitute, completely endorsing his line of research and the news would never see the light of day. Too many prominent luminaries in Big Science were threatened.
,Arp was not ignored back in 1960, he was given two awards for his work,,the Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy by the American Astronomical Society and Newcomb Cleveland Prize.

Arp originally proposed his theories in the 1960s, however, telescopes and astronomical instrumentation have advanced greatly; the Hubble Space Telescope was launched, multiple 8-10 meter telescopes (such as those at Keck Observatory) have become operational, and detectors such as CCDs are now more widely employed. These new telescopes and new instrumentation have been utilized to examine QSOs further. QSOs are now generally accepted to be very distant galaxies with high redshifts. Moreover, many imaging surveys, most notably the Hubble Deep Field, have found many high-redshift objects that are not QSOs but that appear to be normal galaxies like those found nearby. Moreover, the spectra of the high-redshift galaxies, as seen from X-ray to radio wavelengths, match the spectra of nearby galaxies (particularly galaxies with high levels of star formation activity but also galaxies with normal or extinguished star formation activity) when corrected for redshift effects.
Nonetheless, Arp has not wavered from his stand against the Big Bang and still publishes articles stating his contrary view in both popular and scientific literature, frequently collaborating with Geoffrey Burbidge and Margaret Burbidge.

Resources:

1. S. P. Driver, A. Fernandez-Soto, W. J. Couch, S. C. Odewahn, R. A. Windhorst, S. Phillips, K. Lanzetta, A. Yahil (1998). "Morphological Number Counts and Redshift Distributions to I<26 from the Hubble Deep Field: Implications for the Evolution of Ellipticals, Spirals, and Irregulars". Astrophysical Journal 496: L93–L96. doi:10.1086/311257.
2. W. J. Couch, R. S. Ellis, J. Godwin, D. Carter (1983). "Spectral energy distributions for galaxies in high redshift clusters. I - Methods and application to three clusters with Z = 0.22-0.31". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 205: 1287–1312.
3. Postman, L. M. Lubin, J. B. Oke (1998). "A Study of Nine High-Redshift Clusters of Galaxies. II. Photometry, Spectra, and Ages of Clusters 0023+0423 and 1604+4304". Astronomical Journal 116: 560–583. doi:10.1086/300463.
4. R. S. Priddey, R. G. McMahon (2001). "The far-infrared-submillimetre spectral energy distribution of high-redshift quasars". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 324: L17–L22. doi:10.1046/j.1365-8711.2001.04548.x.
5. "Smithsonian/NASA ADS Custom Query Form". Results for "Arp, H". Retrieved 2006-09-03.
6. H. Arp (1966). "Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies". Astrophysical Journal Supplement 14: 1–20. doi:10.1086/190147.
7. Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy
8. About the AAAS: History & Archives
9. Juan Miguel Campanario and Brian Martin, "Challenging dominant physics paradigms" (2004) Journal of Scientific Exploration, vol. 18, no. 3, Fall 2004, pp. 421-438
Science is first political. Then, if possible, it considers your lofty objective scientific principles. Arp is just the example I am most familiar with. But he is far from alone. You see, these are the kind of claims that really, really need citations. Single cases, I am afraid, do not show a patern.

Sanjay Gupta, MD, in his book, Cheating Death, relates the catch 22 position of the use of failed CPR techniques and the reluctance of the American Heart Association and American Medical Association to adopt clearly superior techniques. The present CPR technique is a three part strategy: breathing, compressions, defibrillation. Recent studies have shown that the breathing has no measurable value, defibrillation is killing people, not because it doesn't work, but because too much time is being taken with it.

Actually the most important part of CPR turns out to be chest compressions. Dr Mike Kellum had a better idea, born from pig studies, which found that compressions alone, without mouth to mouth resuscitation, was much more effective in saving lives. He went to Mercy Hospital System in rural Arizona, where the emergency services director was fed up.

"Why are we spending time trying to bring no one back to life?" For the previous three years, Mercy Hospital System EMTs had responded to 92 cases of witnessed cardiac arrests, saving only 19, five of which ended up with serious brain damage.

They bucked the AMA and AHA, changing their CPR method to two hundred chest compressions, followed by a single shock from the defibrillator. No breaths at all during the procedure. They did insert what Gupta refers to as "a small device inserted into the mouth to pump in additional oxygen," in other words, to ensure that the patient was able to obtain oxygen, but that was all. The proceedure was 200 compressions, 1 shock, 200 compressions, 1 shock, 200 compressions, 1 shock. That's 600 hard, fast compressions in the regimen.

In 2006, four years after this policy was instituted, FINALLY the American Journal of Medicine could ignore them no longer. Finally, the rest of the country could be told that survival rates without brain damage had gone from 15% to 48% just from the institution of this heresy.

Tell me. Did YOU know about this? Do YOU think it was warranted to sacrifice the lives of two thirds of savable cardiac patients for four years in defense of certain luminaries' careers? How does your local health authority conduct CPR today. Will they kill your father or grandfather or you because people whose responsibility it is to disseminate cutting edge scientific discovery are not doing so in defense of their position and influence?

Heresy is a threat. It is also a promise that the future will be better than today. Embracing that better future means a carefully considered embracing of heresy. Challenge of authority is always the first step toward progress.

Change takes time to initiate, you can not expect everything to change overnight. And yes, I did know this because I have gone through several first aid courses and was the designated field medic for my recon section while in the army. That being said, peer review is not a rapid process, since when someone is trying to get a paper published it is handed out to several other experts in the field who then try to find fault with it by repeating hte experiments described in the way described, only if they get the same results does the paper pass peer review, if however the results differ with the same methodology there is clearly a problem. All that takes time, nd then it takes even more time for cuting edge science to get into science classrooms, because classrooms do not teach the cutting edge, they teach science that has been shown to be good beyond reasonable doubt.

And as to the irrelevance of sir Newtons belief, sir Newton could have been a transvestite who had sex with cammels and sacrificed small children to Cthulu, that would have no bearing on the validity of his theory.

[Platapus]

Well I for one would be interested in hearing what you see those differences to be. Spirituality is a religions main reason for existence but certainly not the only one.


To be more accurate, I was referring to the differences between what I call
a. "personal religion" - Faith in your god and a personal relationship with your god or your prophet.

b. "organizational religion" - membership or subscription to a specific organized religious group e.g., church, temple, or mosque.

It is my position that a person can have "personal religion" without being a member of a organized church and that a person can be a member of a church without having any relationship with their god or prophet.

This is why I say the two can be independent of each other as one does not necessarily cause or require the other.

[Skybird]

To be more accurate, I was referring to the differences between what I call
a. "personal religion" - Faith in your god and a personal relationship with your god or your prophet.

b. "organizational religion" - membership or subscription to a specific organized religious group e.g., church, temple, or mosque.

It is my position that a person can have "personal religion" without being a member of a organized church and that a person can be a member of a church without having any relationship with their god or prophet.

This is why I say the two can be independent of each other as one does not necessarily cause or require the other.
I understand that to go at the same direction like my own thinking on the two terms.

A being, a life form aware of it's mortality, by that is probably uncapable to not ask questions on from where we come, where we go, why all this is and how much time we have left. This asking mind that wants to know itself beyond the span of it'S life on Earth I call spirituality, and it is a most private, intimate thing, obviously, for nobody sees the world exactly the very same way like I see it. From some point on, everyone of us is alone again with his way to see existence and cosmos.

Religion is when this attitude moves from the priuvate into the public space, gets organised, institutionalised, starts to raise demands to others, establishes dogmas and priest'S hierarchies benefitting from not letting people ask questions and find their own answers, but giving the prepared answers that keep them in dependance from the priests. That way, what orginally was a private, intimate thing, turns into poltiics, and often brutal powerpolitics indeed.

Man cannot avoid to be a spiritual being. We all are, even those of us believing in deities - or those of use refusing the idea of deities. Even those of us trying to evade these questions on their own existence I outlined above, are spiritual. Their strategy to deal with them is to ignore them by finding distraction, and hoping to escape the pain of not knowing for sure.

Comparing this spirituality to religion's anything but selfless motives, that are instead searching for control and power and keeping the collective together and strong and in uniformity (by doing so both defining and protecting it's group identity), means that spirituality and religion are antagonistic. And your individual spirituality certainly does not need any form of arbitrary, foreignly created group identity that gets imposed onto you and claims yourself to be it's own. In order to adress your spirituality, you must refuse the religions and their dogmas, and where you follow the religions and their prefixed "answers", you prevent yourself from foicussing on your spirituality. You cannot be spiritual and relgious at the same time, therefore, it is either this or that. The decline of organised christian religion in the West hints at that, too.

I am atheist and anti-theist, not only don't I care for wether or not gods exists, but I am sure that gods do not exist. I see no explanatory value in assuming that he/her/it/they exist, I do not need this conception to find peace of mind in my life. The Christian churches, as well as the orthodox hierarchy in Judaism, and Islam, I consider to be our No.1 public enemies, all these putting our freedom, world peace, justice and reasonability at risk.

Nevertheless I consider myself to be a highly spiritual being. Although I am determindly anti-religious .

Obviously I base less on a strict linguistic definition of the Latin and Greek origins of the words spirituality and religion, but on a reflection of historic developements.

Ethics and moral behavior depend on your attitude towards life and cosmos. the way you see them decides the way you approach their many details and constant challenges they raise in your life. But the way you see cosmos and life, as I argued above, is forming your spirituality, whereas religion prevents that individual, pruvate, direct attitude. therefore the claim that withouit religion there cannot be morals and ethics, must be rejected. Religion is amoral by defintion, and you can see that in that where the is relgion in strong power and control some of the most imhumane and imoral crimes in the history of mankind have been committed, and extraordinary intolerance, coldheartedness and brutality gets practiced in the name of religion. Prime example of coorse is islam, but you also see the same pattern in orthodox Judaism and Christinian fundamentalism.

Morals are not there because of religion, but despite the existence of religion. the shape and nature of morals does not get formed by relgion, but spirituality.

[Fish]

Duble post

[Rockin Robbins]

,Arp was not ignored back in 1960, he was given two awards for his work,,the Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy by the American Astronomical Society and Newcomb Cleveland Prize.

My point was that Arp was a heavy hitter recognized by the establishment until he was marginalized for his conclusions based on his Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, published in 1966, well after his awards. You seek, by ignoring the chronology of events, to imply that he was not banished, but endorsed by big science. Nothing could be further from the truth, and your portrayal is really cute, but easily refuted. My point is that accepted scientists can be banished for heretical activity. Fred Hubble himself was censored when a speech traditionally published by the Astronomical Journal was omitted where he dared to agree with Arp. That's political oppression, not dispassionate peer review. Idealized portrayals of the process are just plain silly and untrue.

Arp originally proposed his theories in the 1960s, however, telescopes and astronomical instrumentation have advanced greatly; the Hubble Space Telescope was launched, multiple 8-10 meter telescopes (such as those at Keck Observatory) have become operational, and detectors such as CCDs are now more widely employed. These new telescopes and new instrumentation have been utilized to examine QSOs further. QSOs are now generally accepted to be very distant galaxies with high redshifts. Moreover, many imaging surveys, most notably the Hubble Deep Field, have found many high-redshift objects that are not QSOs but that appear to be normal galaxies like those found nearby. Moreover, the spectra of the high-redshift galaxies, as seen from X-ray to radio wavelengths, match the spectra of nearby galaxies (particularly galaxies with high levels of star formation activity but also galaxies with normal or extinguished star formation activity) when corrected for redshift effects.
Nonetheless, Arp has not wavered from his stand against the Big Bang and still publishes articles stating his contrary view in both popular and scientific literature, frequently collaborating with Geoffrey Burbidge and Margaret Burbidge.I'll leave out your references. You just smog the air with irrelevancies, all of which are true but do not bear on the case at all. HST could discover little green men but that would not reflect on the evidence that Arp presented. Arp's website specifically brings up discoveries that have modified his original theories and discoveries that reinforce his theories as well. Harlton Arp is no flat earther--he's a scientist, operating as such. First rule of science is that all ideas must be falsifiable.

Science is a very nasty game. These people are brilliant, they are absolutely convinced that they are right, and they have no scruples about destroying each other (literally sometimes) to get ahead. Many of them do not play well with others. Underneath the thin veneer of proper behavior is a monster that eats its own.

Also, I did not produce one example of peer review used as a weapon against non-conformers, I produced three among dozens and dozens. I agree that peer review, like all authority, is a necessary thing to separate science from pseudoscience. However, like all forms of authority, it is subject to abuse and the very power of the process attracts those who would abuse that power, just as the honorable profession of school teacher attracts pedophiles. Peer review is not the arbiter of truth. It is just one aspect of the search for that truth. Questioning the authority of the peer review process serves two purposes: to keep or make the peer review process honest and without regard to the personal stakes of the reviewers, and to give proper regard for the heretics who alone will take any field to its next level of orthodoxy. Heretics alone are responsible for all progress, no matter now irritating they may be.

Make no mistake, abuse of authority is not confined to science. Read Truth, Lies and O-Rings. The corporate world and the world of government bureaucracy is full of abusive characters too. Banks, which are supposed to take the term "fiduciary responsibility" seriously now have computer programs to purposely damage you, their customer, by exploiting an overdraft by paying out checks not in the order they are received, but in an order calculated to bounce the greatest possible number of checks!

Another large megabank entered into a partnership with criminals to find accounts in all bank chains, not just their own, of customers who had died and the account was abandoned. They then stole billions of dollars from those accounts. Caught by the federal government, they entered into a consent agreement which did not obligate them to find and refund that money to relatives. Only if a relative inquired, already knowing the customer's account number, social security number and balance were they required to refund. They were not required to provide any of the necessary information if asked. Source: clarkhoward.com, which names the bank involved.

All this is nothing new. I'm personally convinced that the situation was no better and most likely worse a hundred years ago, simply because it could all be better hidden then. We assume that what we don't know doesn't exist.

[Fish]

I propose we initiate a new rule requiring all evidence presented by either side to include references to peer reviewed research.



Exellent idea.


Ohh, and welcome.:woot:

[Sailor Steve]

If there is one central tenent to any monotheistic religion is that God is perfect and man is fallible. All religions, being constructs of man, are therefore fallible as well.
The problem that arises is that all religions claim to be constructs of God, and therefore infallible. But if they disagree, only one can be right. And so they censure and finally kill each other, because their God is the only true one.

I find those who claim to speak for God as absurd as those who claim that God does not exist. Both are shining examples of Mans arrogance.
I wasn't always of that mind, but I get a little closer every day. My bottom line these days is "I don't know...and I don't think you do either".

[antikristuseke]

My point was that Arp was a heavy hitter recognized by the establishment until he was marginalized for his conclusions based on his Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, published in 1966, well after his awards. You seek, by ignoring the chronology of events, to imply that he was not banished, but endorsed by big science. Nothing could be further from the truth, and your portrayal is really cute, but easily refuted. My point is that accepted scientists can be banished for heretical activity. Fred Hubble himself was censored when a speech traditionally published by the Astronomical Journal was omitted where he dared to agree with Arp. That's political oppression, not dispassionate peer review. Idealized portrayals of the process are just plain silly and untrue.


Peer review is not perfect, thats true, still it is the bast mankind has come up with. It is a brutal process, I agree. But Arp was not shunned because of his hypothesis, more probably because hypothesis was found to be inaccurate and lacking in corroborating evidence.

Anyhow, abuses of authority do happen within scientific circles and elsewhere, but to suggest that the process of peer peer review is a political tool foremost is little short of a conspiracy theory as it would sugest that those scientists reviewing papers for publication all cooperated to keep what you called heresy out. I find that a bit difficult to believe and in my own encounters with research scientists they do not resent being shown to be wrong as much as you seem to make it out to be (I could be misunderstanding you here), on the contrary, when proven to be mistaken they have shown gratitude because they have learned something. Granted, this is but anecdotal evidence and should be taken as such.

[August]

The problem that arises is that all religions claim to be constructs of God, and therefore infallible. But if they disagree, only one can be right. And so they censure and finally kill each other, because their God is the only true one.

Yep, it's pure human arrogance to actually believe that ones particular interpretation of the supreme being is the only possibly correct one. Don't they realize that religions are divinely inspired and not actually created by divinity? Their writings even say it themselves. After all it's the "Gospel according to John" or, the "Book of Joshua", in other words, a humans interpretation of what God said or did, not God himself saying or doing it. It is the word of God, one (or more) step removed.

But religions are more than just recitations of the word of God. They also serve as a code of conduct and a value system. Both necessary things for any human society to be viable.

[Onkel Neal]

Creation has evolved!:O:

Excellent! Beat me to it :O:

Some years ago I was struck by the thought that not all people are Christians. I was about 12 and until that time, I thought the budhists, muslims, hindus and all the others were just different Christians, or potential Christians. People still in the dark that can't wait to hear about Jesus. Then it dawned on me that billions of people have never read the Bible and don't give a damn about it. They all have their notion of how the world was created. So when you say "Creation" you invariably link it to the Bible.

But how about the Hindu version? Why don't we debate that? Or the ancient greek one? Just because Zeus is no longer worshiped does that mean that he wasn't for real? Or how about the mayans? So many of us believe that they knew when the world would end. Maybe they knew when the world started. But I have no doubt that you'd start laughing the moment you hear about the Earth Crocodile or the Golden Turtle.

What's funny is that most religions have incorporated astronomical truths into alegories (I'd say astrological but to my surprise, no.). Most religions have a pretty scientific approach to how the world was created. The Bible however was written long ago in a small and insignificant country that was too often ravaged by invaders for the poor scholars to do anything but pray... Really now, how many ancient jewish astronomers or mathematicians do we know about? Why would that be important?

Because the Church burned Giordano Bruno alive and almost did the same thing with Galilei and Copernicus. Yes but now we live in a different era, you might say. We know that the world is round now. Yes, but only because you've seen it on TV. Without images from space there'd still be some that believe the world is flat just because the Bible doesn't say that the world is round.

Fortunately, the church no longer holds science back. We have the protestants to thank for that. People like Newton who were deeply religious, who looked at facts and changed their view of God according to new evidence, always searching more and more. While it's not a fact that God exists or any form of him ever did, it is a fact that without God we would not have any reason to search at all. Existence itself would have no meaning, regardless of being created in 6 days or in the Big Bang. But should there by one out there, he just seems more like a Big Banger to me. :haha:


Now, I like the way this man thinks :yep:

[Fish]

Fortunately, the church no longer holds science back.

Indeed! (http://www.butler.edu/clergyproject/rel_evol_sun.htm):yeah:

The Clergy Letter Project is an endeavor designed to demonstrate that religion and science can be compatible and to elevate the quality of the debate of this issue.

Within the community of Christian believers there are areas of dispute and disagreement, including the proper way to interpret Holy Scripture. While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook. Many of the beloved stories found in the Bible – the Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark – convey timeless truths about God, human beings, and the proper relationship between Creator and creation expressed in the only form capable of transmitting these truths from generation to generation. Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts.
We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God’s loving plan of salvation for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.[1]


Now find 1200 atheist who deny evolution?
No?
20?
No?
2?

[antikristuseke]

Indeed! (http://www.butler.edu/clergyproject/rel_evol_sun.htm):yeah:





Now find 1200 atheist who deny evolution?
No?
20?
No?
2?

This is completely irrelevant to the validity of evolution though.

[Fish]

This is completely irrelevant to the validity of evolution though.


I know.:oops: :O:

[Letum]

This is completely irrelevant to the validity of evolution though.


Not completely.
It's an illustration of an 'meta-error theory'.

If those who support evolution think that those who do not support it
are ignoring or unfairly discounting large bodies of evidence and
making irrational or unscientific claims, then it is best if they can
explain why it might be that they are being irrational or unscientific.
Saying they are just thick isn't going to cut it because often they are
not.

If you can spot a major difference between the two groups, then
that's a good clue as to where the meta-error theory may lie.

[Nicolas]

This have being said, but i thinked on myself before hearing from others, and my point is this:
I believe in God and creation.
Humans took a lot of time to invent simple things, now, how those birds that Darwin studied could change theyre body to eat especific food, if no one design the new form? the nature doesn't have intelligence or conciousnes. Only a person with certain amount of intelligence (God in this case) can observe a thing, think how it can be changed, and implement a change.
Another thing, is how perfect is all in this world, it couldn't be done itself, is like trhow a lot of paint barrels, and magically you have a good painting, or put a monkey writing in your keyboard and having a poem as a result, the probability this world is a casuality is null.

[Aramike]

This have being said, but i thinked on myself before hearing from others, and my point is this:
I believe in God and creation.
Humans took a lot of time to invent simple things, now, how those birds that Darwin studied could change theyre body to eat especific food, if no one design the new form? the nature doesn't have intelligence or conciousnes. Only a person with certain amount of intelligence (God in this case) can observe a thing, think how it can be changed, and implement a change.
Another thing, is how perfect is all in this world, it couldn't be done itself, is like trhow a lot of paint barrels, and magically you have a good painting, or put a monkey writing in your keyboard and having a poem as a result, the probability this world is a casuality is null.That's not how evolution works, though.

Evolution isn't about nature "deciding" anything. It's about what could be considered genetic abnormalities becoming a favorable trait and therefore being passed along to a new generation.

In other words, let's say you were born with a genetic mutatation causing a third arm. It would not be a very attractive quality for a mate - unless something in the environment caused that 3rd arm to be a favorable mutation, thereby making potential mates seek that quality. That mutation would be more likely to be passed along, thusly asserting its dominance in the gene pool.

It has everything to do with random chance and nothing to do with intelligent design.

[Nicolas]

I do not believe in random chance, i dont think serious evolutionist think on that, because if you studied books of science on how the animals evolved they evolved to good, not to have deformations or things like that, if all is random there is no way the body of animal could get better only by chance.

[Nicolas]

doble post

[antikristuseke]

I do not believe in random chance, i dont think serious evolutionist think on that, because if you studied books of science on how the animals evolved they evolved to good, not to have deformations or things like that, if all is random there is no way the body of animal could get better only by chance.

It is not only by chance. Mutations are random, natural selection is not. In the long run beneficial traits are selected for by environmental and predatory attrition.

Just because you do not know what evolution is is not does not make it any less true.

[Tribesman]

I do not believe in random chance
Throw a dice.

[AVGWarhawk]

Throw a dice.

:up: Excellent!

[Platapus]

I can recommend doing some research on "The Heike crab" as an example of human caused "evolution".

If man can influence such a change in a few hundred years, it is not unreasonable to expect nature to influence other similar changes over millions of years.

[Shearwater]

It has everything to do with random chance and nothing to do with intelligent design.

And that random chance is the link that could be interpreted in a metaphysical way. Or the mere fact that there is existence in the first place.

Throw a dice.

God doesn't play dice! ;)

I can recommend doing some research on "The Heike crab" as an example of human caused "evolution".

If man can influence such a change in a few hundred years, it is not unreasonable to expect nature to influence other similar changes over millions of years.

Another example is the peppered moth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution).

[Platapus]

Another example is the peppered moth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution).

I had totally forgotten about that moth. Good example!

[Iceman]

Kind of weird reading this type of thread again....

I believe WWII happened..I believe the Civil War happened...I believe most of what has been written historicaly about world events going back to scrolls written by Muslims,Buddahists or Jews.....the telling of stories by people is what life is all about.

Every person makes his own choices and beliefs based on his own life experienices and what ideas he chooses to entertain.

Personally I love hearing stories of others....I have met 3 people in my life now who have been clinically dead and the most recent was hit by a drunk driver,head cracked open...was dead on the table....was told he'd never walk etc etc....he walks into our meeting every day.

Point I am trying to make is the stories past down through history sure are going to have embellishments along the way but to discount things merely on the basis of them sounding unbelieveable is kinda selling yourself short.People have some KICK ASS stories ...true stories.

I believe Lazurus was raised from the dead...I believe in the power of faith in Christ almost enough to walk on the water with him...I also find it kinda of funny when people throw around figures like billions of years like that is some "Big" thing ...to God a being who claims immortality what is time?

Time is a frame of reference in imortality....evolution I believe is just a word describing Gods work anyways ....my personal theory....

One is forced to live on some faith....our soldiers have faith in theyre brothers to watch they're backs...I also have faith that the sun will rise tommorrw...if it does not then I have faith in God that the reason it is not, is that it may be time for a change. :sunny:

Well have a good day peeps.

Enjoy the ride.

[onelifecrisis]

God doesn't play dice! ;)

Heh, very apt. Even Einstein was blinded by religion.

[antikristuseke]

God doesn't play dice! ;)


How would you know?

[Letum]

Heh, very apt. Even Einstein was blinded by religion.


Nooo!
Einstein's 'god' is a metaphor for, or a personification of the
meta-physics that fall into philosophy, rather than science.
He is saying that the laws of the universe can no be random, not that
there is a god and he doesn't gamble.

Besides, despite Copenhagen, Einstein may well be right. it is empirically
impossible to find evidence of true randomality as opposed to hidden
non-random mechanisms.

[Skybird]

Einstein, religion, God. I think this late letter by him clears any questions on the issue. And yes, the letter is authentic.

An abridgement of the letter from Albert Einstein to Eric Gutkind from Princeton in January 1954, translated from German by Joan Stambaugh. It will be sold at Bloomsbury auctions on Thursday


... I read a great deal in the last days of your book, and thank you very much for sending it to me. What especially struck me about it was this. With regard to the factual attitude to life and to the human community we have a great deal in common.

... The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them.

In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew the priviliege of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision, probably as the first one. And the animistic interpretations of the religions of nature are in principle not annulled by monopolisation. With such walls we can only attain a certain self-deception, but our moral efforts are not furthered by them. On the contrary.

Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in essential things, ie in our evalutations of human behaviour. What separates us are only intellectual 'props' and 'rationalisation' in Freud's language. Therefore I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete things. With friendly thanks and best wishes

Yours, A. Einstein


http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/may/13/peopleinscience.religion
translated from the german

[August]

Well you know how scientists like to use doublespeak slang when they talk to each other... :up:

[onelifecrisis]

Nooo!
Einstein's 'god' is a metaphor for, or a personification of the
meta-physics that fall into philosophy, rather than science.
He is saying that the laws of the universe can no be random, not that
there is a god and he doesn't gamble.

Oh, I was just being flippant. I know he didn't subscribe to any regular religion like Christianity or whatever. I heard that he defined God as "the natural laws of the universe" or something like that? Perhaps I should have said he was blinded by his "faith".

Besides, despite Copenhagen, Einstein may well be right. it is empirically
impossible to find evidence of true randomality as opposed to hidden
non-random mechanisms.

Interesting, I didn't know that. But that doesn't make him right, when you consider what he was saying. Wasn't he was disagreeing with the theories of quantum mechanics? But they actually hold water whether or not the (apparent) randomness seen in the behaviour of sub-atomic particles really is random (as opposed to being governed by hidden non-random mechanisms) don't they? Making him wrong either way.

[Letum]

Wasn't he was disagreeing with the theories of quantum mechanics?

That's never been quite my impression. I think he just found QT a
little 'superficial' or incomplete. He thought that probability fields and
"spooky action at a distance" where superficial in the way that gravity
was a superficial "spooky action at a distance" before Einstein.
He didn't disagree the QM explained results. He said it is a
"surprisingly good representation of an immense variety of facts", he
just thought there was a better way to explain them without using a
statistical approach, unless probability is used to describe what we
know about a system, rather than what the system is actually like.

The parts of QM his hunches disagreed with are almost all impossible
to be proved wrong. It's also impossible to prove that any theory is
complete, whilst it is not impossible to show that a theory is
incomplete. So if anyone is going to have the last laugh, it's Einstein.

[onelifecrisis]

That's never been quite my impression. I think he just found QT a
little 'superficial' or incomplete. He thought that probability fields and
"spooky action at a distance" where superficial in the way that gravity
was a superficial "spooky action at a distance" before Einstein.
He didn't disagree the QM explained results. He said it is a
"surprisingly good representation of an immense variety of facts", he
just thought there was a better way to explain them without using a
statistical approach, unless probability is used to describe what we
know about a system, rather than what the system is actually like.

The parts of QM his hunches disagreed with are almost all impossible
to be proved wrong. It's also impossible to prove that any theory is
complete, whilst it is not impossible to show that a theory is
incomplete. So if anyone is going to have the last laugh, it's Einstein.

Good to know.
I was under the impression that QT does not necessarily imply action at a distance. A quick browse of my old friend Wikipedia tells me I'm right (or at least that Wikipedia agrees with me ;)) and that action at a distance is implied only if you assume that Einsteins hidden variables do exist. Which puts Einstein in a bit of a tight spot if you ask me. His theory is only correct if his reasons for believing it are incorrect. So, funnily enough, he's still wrong either way.

[Morts]

sooo....nothing new from the creationist side ?

[Tribesman]

sooo....nothing new from the creationist side ?
No not really, nothing interesting at all from the creationists recently.
At least not since they settled out of court after accusing each other of unethical business practices, fraud, heresy, sexual improprierty and witchcraft.
But now they have settled their differences they will be back on track spreading the truth to the world.

[Onkel Neal]

sooo....nothing new from the creationist side ?


What? You know their point of view isn't likely to evolve over time. :-j

[CaptainHaplo]

I havent forgotten this thread - I actually am trying to digest and research all the data that I have found here. I don't believe its helpful if I don't give it some intellectually honest effort.

[August]

What? You know their point of view isn't likely to evolve over time. :-j

Ooh that pun was Biblical!

[Morts]

What? You know their point of view isn't likely to evolve over time. :-j
arharharhar, have you heard of bibleution :rotfl2:?

[Snestorm]

Hmmm.
I'll have to declare neutrality as I don't by into either THEORY.
Neither should be represented as fact.

[Skybird]

Hmmm.
I'll have to declare neutrality as I don't by into either THEORY.
Neither should be represented as fact.
science, if done honestly and seriously, does not mistake theory for fact, but always means "theory" in its conclusions, which is constantly tested, where needed: corrected, and eventually replaced with a better one.

currently darwin is quite dominant, a paradigm, thus it sees very small corrections only currently, also corrections only get done when needed: due to new observations that cannot be explained by theb old theory. This slowness in change can - but must not always - speak for the quality of the theory. But it is not engraved in stone. It's just the best explanation for things we so far could have come up with.

Creationism is sold not as theory, but as pure fact, and is not tested and does not get corrected or changed. And certainly it is unavailable for eventually being replaced.

so, you are a bit wrong there when saying both science and creationism are theories:
Evolution is a theory. Creationism is a dogma.
Dogmas are unavailable for critical reflection and analysis.

[Snestorm]

Evolution is a theory. Creationism is a dogma.
Dogmas are unavailable for critical reflection and analysis.

Now this, I find quite acceptable. Well stated!

[August]

Dogmas are unavailable for critical reflection and analysis.

Why? You do it all the time!

[Fish]

Hmmm.
I'll have to declare neutrality as I don't by into either THEORY.
Neither should be represented as fact.


As do the THEORY of gravitation. :woot:

[Shearwater]

As do the THEORY of gravitation. :woot:

Do you intend to open a thread about IF?

[Sailor Steve]

There is no such thing as gravity.









The whole earth sucks.

[August]

Why does it blow in Wyoming?





Because Nebraska sucks... :D

[Platapus]

Why does it blow in Wyoming?





Because Nebraska sucks... :D

HEY!! I spent eight pretty good years in Omaha in the military. Not a bad place at all. Pbpbpbpbpb

:D

[August]

HEY!! I spent eight pretty good years in Omaha in the military. Not a bad place at all. Pbpbpbpbpb

:D

My old Team Sergeant lived in Cheyenne and he told me that one. :)

[Iceman]

Vanity of vanites all is vanity...nothing new under the sun.

Nothing new from creationists because there is no need for us to try to "Sell" God as do the evolutionists try to sell science...science is mans attempt to cast light into the darkness.

Faith is a personal matter for the individual...the theory of Evolution...well good luck with that....to me you are the encapsulation of "Doubting Thomas"...you will not, absolutly not, believe unless you see it, touch it, taste it...yet you are living by faith already....just your faith holds no particuliar hope of any kind of any real future. Your faith tells you, your born,you die, and and that's the finite end.

Most intrepretations of the bible are so clinical and sanitary that most cannot not get to the deeper understanding of what is spoken....it is very clear to one who can hear.

It speaks of other creatures and other domains not bound at all by time or death....Death is the door we will all pass thru soon and that is where in the back of the evolutionists mind he is really scared. Some may think they will be able to just hedge there bets and believe at the final moment and God will welcome you in to the Kingdom at the last moment...it does not work that way is all....all the "Old" examples are there....this one is the example of Noah.....when the rain begins to fall ,and you ain't in the boat, it's already too late.

A true believer does not get excited over these types of conversations at all to the contrary again...most of you are the perfect example of the following passages...a true believer lives by this...we pray for all of you. Passage 7:6 I say to the Christians here to read and understand and do not be disheartned but learn this parable.
http://kingjbible.com/clearrectangle.gif
Matthew 7
King James Bible

1 (http://bible.cc/matthew/7-1.htm) Judge not, that ye be not judged. 2 (http://bible.cc/matthew/7-2.htm) For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. 3 (http://bible.cc/matthew/7-3.htm) And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? 4 (http://bible.cc/matthew/7-4.htm) Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? 5 (http://bible.cc/matthew/7-5.htm) Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
6 (http://bible.cc/matthew/7-6.htm) Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.
7 (http://bible.cc/matthew/7-7.htm) Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: 8 (http://bible.cc/matthew/7-8.htm) For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. 9 (http://bible.cc/matthew/7-9.htm) Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? 10 (http://bible.cc/matthew/7-10.htm) Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? 11 (http://bible.cc/matthew/7-11.htm) If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? 12 (http://bible.cc/matthew/7-12.htm) Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets. 13 (http://bible.cc/matthew/7-13.htm) Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: 14 (http://bible.cc/matthew/7-14.htm) Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.




Peace and Merry CHRISTmas all you heathens... lol jk :):arrgh!:

[Snestorm]

You have no problem believing all that, but you don't buy the 40 virgins thing?!

"Though shall not kill", unless Uncle Sam says so.
(Someone mentioned the word hypocrit.)

GLÆDELIG JUL OG GODT NYTÅR.
(Enjoy your holidays).

[Skybird]

Listening to sermons makes hungry.

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/3044/funnypicturescatpraysfo.jpg (http://img109.imageshack.us/i/funnypicturescatpraysfo.jpg/)

[Snestorm]

Listening to sermons makes hungry.

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/3044/funnypicturescatpraysfo.jpg (http://img109.imageshack.us/i/funnypicturescatpraysfo.jpg/)

Don't worry Kitty, the Tooth Fairy is here.

[Morts]

Your faith tells you, your born,you die, and and that's the finite end.


im sorry, but i dont have faith:)

[Snestorm]

im sorry, but i dont have faith:)

Once I knew a girl named Faith, but I never had her.

[August]

Though shall not kill"

Actually it should read "Thou shalt not murder", a distinction some folks don't understand.

[Tribesman]

Actually it should read "Thou shalt not murder", a distinction some folks don't understand.
Should it?
Based on which version of the bible?
Since you get lots of cretinists that with their fundamentalist literal interpretations also insist that the KJV is the only real version are you trying to say that the one true version is written wrong?

Nothing new from creationists because there is no need for us to try to "Sell" God
So you don't believe in the teachings of the bible then Iceman. Thats really funny from someone who calls themselves a christian and believes in creationism because of a bible story.
Then again its par for the course from those that shout about their faith.
Though what is even funnier is you make that claim about not selling God and mention doubters...can you complete the lines that follow this....."Then the eleuen disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountaine where Iesus had appointed them."?
Have a clue, it mentions doubt and involves selling God around the world.

[Stealth Hunter]

I never really have understood that concept. I mean, if the Bible is the inherent word of a supreme being, there should only be one version of it and one interpretation of it. Yet each sect of Christianity is different in terms of beliefs and practices (the Baptists from the Lutherans, the Methodists from the Catholics, the Quakers from the Evangelicals, etc.) and there are more than enough different versions of the Bible, mostly in terms of translations, but even so you'd expect them to be the same- if it is indeed the word of god, I mean. I don't believe it is. This fact only strengthens my resolve. Plus the fact that a Christian god who is omnipotent and omniscient as the Bible implies is logically contradictory and therefore cannot exist in the same sense that you can't have a circular square or iron gold or a bed made of sleep doesn't do too much to boost my belief; it kind of kills it actually.

[Stealth Hunter]

Transcription factors are and always will be an important part of molecular biology. By extension medical research for the foreseeable future. For the non-biologists among you, a transcription factor is basically a switch. It turns on a specific gene or set of genes in response to a specific stimulus. Hypoxia Inducible Factor, or HIF, as its name suggests, responds to a hypoxic environment and goes on to turn on, literally, hundreds of genes which induce changes in angiogeneisis, glycolysis, the Krebs Cycle, and oxidative phosphorylation, as well as reducing the metabolic load of the cell in question.

The transcription factor needs to know what gene to turn on, and where in the genome it's located. That's why in the 5' untranslated region of a gene which is to be activated (5'UTR) there is a specific site known as the transcription factor binding site, or consensus site. These sites are quite specific to the transcription factor in question, and induce transcription (and ultimately the translation) of the gene downstream of the consensus site.

If we know what genes are activated, how they're activated, and how specific transcription factors activate specific genes in a specific order, we can control the system and the potential for treatment of a host of diseases and injuries is enormous. For example, one of HIF's major activities is the growing of new blood vessels and capillary beds. In the heart, it remodels the myocardium and enhances cardiac function. If we can control what HIF does, we can potentially use the body's own mechanisms to repair the damage from a myocardial infarction with no ill-effects whatsoever.

Consensus sites tend to be short. Very short. On top of that, the binding factor doesn't bind to a unique site, but to a set of closely-related sites. HIF, to use my example above, has two known sites that it can bind with, both of which are 5 basepairs long.

Well, the problem with a short sequence is that it's not unique. A specific 25 basepair sequence is one that you'd only expect to show up once anywhere in the human genome. By comparison, if we have two possible sites, each of which has 5 basepairs, it shows up everywhere. Literally. To give you some perspective on what I mean by "everywhere," if you take our four bases, a, c, g and t, and construct a completely random strand of 2500 basepairs, along with its reverse complement, you'd expect one of our consensus sites to show up completely at random, at least once, on either the forward or reverse strands of that double-stranded DNA sequence. In the human genome, that means that you'd expect to see it over a million times just by pure chance.

The human genome only has about 30,000 genes, so obviously, all of those sites can't be real. But how can we look at a site and know that it's a real consensus site, or just one that shares its sequence?

Apparently, a couple of scientists, Loots and Ovcharenko developed a program called rVista in 2004. In the intervening four years, it has become the way in which one differentiates a "real" consensus site from a "fake" one.

You start with the assumption that a number of different animals share a common ancestor. You look at the gene sequence of animals closely related to it on the evolutionary tree. If you're studying a mouse, you compare your sequence to that found in rats and rabbits. If you're studying a human, you compare your sequence to Chimpanzees and Orangoutans. The program uses two criteria to filter the "fake" sequences from the "real" ones. 1) functional sequences will be conserved by evolution. 2) functional sequences will be more accurately conserved between closely related species than between distantly-related ones. From this, it aligns the sequences and determines whether these short, non-coding consensus sites are significant.

It works. It has a lower than 4% false-positive rate. It would only work if evolution were true, because the program is designed to analyze sequences under an evolutionary framework. If evolution is false, then the program would be unable to produce any valid data whatsoever.

The process by which rVista was developed and desiged can be found in:

G. Loots and I. Ovcharenko, rVista 2.0: evolutionary analysis of transcription factor binding sites. Nucleic Acids Research, 32, W217-W221 (2004)

It's somewhat technical, but as you can see, this algorithm is completely useless, unless evolution in general (common descent to be specific) is true.

Now my question: What would be the Creationist approach to the same problem?

[onelifecrisis]

:har:

When I grow up I want to be just like Tribesman.

Death is the door we will all pass thru soon and that is where in the back of the evolutionists mind he is really scared.

I think you've got your "creationists" (theists) and your "evolutionists" (atheists) the wrong way around. Without fear of death, who needs fairy stories? But whatever... if it gives you strength you go right on believing that death is really just a magical door to a happy place where everyone is super nice.

[SteamWake]

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh312/UlteriorModem/creationistbingo.jpg

[Skybird]

http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/1892/creationism.jpg (http://img706.imageshack.us/i/creationism.jpg/)

http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/7702/creationisme.jpg (http://img199.imageshack.us/i/creationisme.jpg/)

[August]

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h149/demotivator/EVOLUTIONISTS.jpg

[Stealth Hunter]

http://static.funnyjunk.com/pictures/christianity_demotivator1.jpg
http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii259/warknife/jesus_supper_zombie_l.jpg

[antikristuseke]

http://mattcbr.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/break-the-cycle.jpg

[Onkel Neal]

http://static.funnyjunk.com/pictures/christianity_demotivator1.jpg
http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii259/warknife/jesus_supper_zombie_l.jpg


So, respect for others is out the window in this thread, thanks :shifty:

[antikristuseke]

Everyone has been pretty respectful so far, don't see why a few images would change that.

[August]

Apparently Stealth Hunter's hatred for Christians extends far beyond just the Creationists. :nope:

[antikristuseke]

OH those poor persecuted christians...
Personally i have a beef with every organized religion out there.

[Onkel Neal]

Everyone has been pretty respectful so far, don't see why a few images would change that.


Escalation. I've seen it many times in the Internet.

[August]

OH those poor persecuted christians...
Personally i have a beef with every organized religion out there.

So what does your problem have to do with the topic of this thread?

[Stealth Hunter]

Apparently Stealth Hunter's hatred for Christians extends far beyond just the Creationists. :nope:
So what does your problem have to do with the topic of this thread?

Hatred? What hatred? There's been no such thing here. If you can't see that for yourself, well- that sucks; but it's not going to stop me from posting a few pictures I find funny. Furthermore, what does my problem, assuming I had one, with Christianity have to do with the topic of this thread?

Which reminds me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dyVYsjz5M0

:har:

Escalation. I've seen it many times in the Internet.

Though it hasn't exploded yet. And unlikely it will. I had no problem with the "Evolutionists" demotivator, you didn't have any problem with the Biblical circular logic image, yet there's something wrong with a Christianity demotivator and zombie apostles shopped image?

What about this?

http://brian.carnell.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/jesus_brb.jpg

Or this?

http://images.encyclopediadramatica.com/images/f/f4/Jesus_Zombie_lulz.gif


EDIT:

I thought the last one was cute and funny at the same time, from a textual perspective.

[antikristuseke]

So what does your problem have to do with the topic of this thread?

Nothing at all.

[Onkel Neal]

Though it hasn't exploded yet. And unlikely it will. I had no problem with the "Evolutionists" demotivator, you didn't have any problem with the Biblical circular logic image, yet there's something wrong with a Christianity demotivator and zombie apostles shopped image?


Well, I guess it helps us know more about you.

[Letum]

Is this the after-thread party?

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2794/4078330790_54d887a3ef.jpg

[karamazovnew]

:har:

I think you've got your "creationists" (theists) and your "evolutionists" (atheists) the wrong way around. Without fear of death, who needs fairy stories? But whatever... if it gives you strength you go right on believing that death is really just a magical door to a happy place where everyone is super nice.

Agnostic Creationists such as myself believe that the original universe was created in its original form by a deity of some form, but that the identity of said deity is unknown or impossible to prove. The Creation and the Afterlife are not so tightly linked as atheists might like to think. They only draw power from our inability to ponder the meaning of Nothing, the one before life and the one after it.

Recent physics theories have pushed this question even further. In an age of such wonderful advances, the search for the start of existence (creation of Mass in the universe), the meaning of life and the long death of all existence are all a single entity. There is a slight possibility that scientists will prove that this Universe is merely a burning match in another greater Mega Universe. They might very well reach the end of possible research, a recursive theory that explains everything and nothing at the same time.

At that time, passionate atheists will have a hard time to explain how their view can be viewed as scientific Truth and not as a simple Belief, like all others. Any final belief is wrong, and the bad part about atheism is that it's an end to all questions, not a start. I was one myself until I started asking new questions and found even less philosophical support that the one Christianity gave me. In the end, the best philosophy is this : "Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing."

The Gettier problem applies to all "Final Solution" religions and beliefs.
Christianity (Bible):
- God exists
- S believes that God exists
- if God exists, S (because the Bible says he exists) would believe that God exists
- if God doesn't exist, S (because the Bible doesn't say he exists OR because the Bible says that God doesn't exist) wouldn't believe that God exists.

Since the last condition is not true, it means that Christians have no knowledge of the existence of god, purely based on the Bible.

Atheists (science):
- God doesn't exist
- S believes that God doesn't exist
- if God doesn't exist, S (because there is scientific proof that he doesn't exist) would believe that God doesn't exist
- if God does exist, S (because there is scientific proof that he exists) would believe that God exists.

Since there is no scientific proof that God doesn't exist, an atheist cannot yet claim knowledge of this fact.

Agnostics (proof):
- God is unknown or unknowable.
- S believe that God is unknowable.
- If God is unknowable, S (because there is no proof of God) would believe that god is unknowable.
- If God is knowable, S (because there is proof of God) wouldn't believe that God is unknowable.

Which is true. Since agnostics do not try to put a face on God and take as only proof of his existence the existence of the Universe itself, they are not wrong.

Agnostics:
- God created the Universe (or, the Universe was created, or the Universe exists)
- S believes that God created the Universe
- If God did create the Universe, S (because the Universe exists) would believe that God created the Universe
- If God didn't create the Universe, S (because the Universe doesn't exist, therefore S doesn't exist) wouldn't believe that God created the Universe.

This is almost a form of "I exist therefore I think, I think therefore I exist."

Man.. my head hurts :doh:

[NeonSamurai]

You should probably define yourself as an Agnostic Theist, not an Agnostic, as plain agnostics neither believe nor disbelieve in a deity or deities as there is no proof either way. Agnostic Theists believe there is a deity or deities, but as you say they do not try to explain it in humanistic terms as such entities are unknowable.

[IanC]

Here's my much researched theory results;
1. God may exist.
2. God may not exist.
Nobody knows. Period.

[onelifecrisis]

Agnostic Creationists such as myself believe that the original universe was created in its original form by a deity of some form, but that the identity of said deity is unknown or impossible to prove. The Creation and the Afterlife are not so tightly linked as atheists might like to think. They only draw power from our inability to ponder the meaning of Nothing, the one before life and the one after it.

Recent physics theories have pushed this question even further. In an age of such wonderful advances, the search for the start of existence (creation of Mass in the universe), the meaning of life and the long death of all existence are all a single entity. There is a slight possibility that scientists will prove that this Universe is merely a burning match in another greater Mega Universe. They might very well reach the end of possible research, a recursive theory that explains everything and nothing at the same time.

At that time, passionate atheists will have a hard time to explain how their view can be viewed as scientific Truth and not as a simple Belief, like all others. Any final belief is wrong, and the bad part about atheism is that it's an end to all questions, not a start. I was one myself until I started asking new questions and found even less philosophical support that the one Christianity gave me. In the end, the best philosophy is this : "Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing."

The Gettier problem applies to all "Final Solution" religions and beliefs.
Christianity (Bible):
- God exists
- S believes that God exists
- if God exists, S (because the Bible says he exists) would believe that God exists
- if God doesn't exist, S (because the Bible doesn't say he exists OR because the Bible says that God doesn't exist) wouldn't believe that God exists.

Since the last condition is not true, it means that Christians have no knowledge of the existence of god, purely based on the Bible.

Atheists (science):
- God doesn't exist
- S believes that God doesn't exist
- if God doesn't exist, S (because there is scientific proof that he doesn't exist) would believe that God doesn't exist
- if God does exist, S (because there is scientific proof that he exists) would believe that God exists.

Since there is no scientific proof that God doesn't exist, an atheist cannot yet claim knowledge of this fact.

Agnostics (proof):
- God is unknown or unknowable.
- S believe that God is unknowable.
- If God is unknowable, S (because there is no proof of God) would believe that god is unknowable.
- If God is knowable, S (because there is proof of God) wouldn't believe that God is unknowable.

Which is true. Since agnostics do not try to put a face on God and take as only proof of his existence the existence of the Universe itself, they are not wrong.

Agnostics:
- God created the Universe (or, the Universe was created, or the Universe exists)
- S believes that God created the Universe
- If God did create the Universe, S (because the Universe exists) would believe that God created the Universe
- If God didn't create the Universe, S (because the Universe doesn't exist, therefore S doesn't exist) wouldn't believe that God created the Universe.

This is almost a form of "I exist therefore I think, I think therefore I exist."

Man.. my head hurts :doh:

I've no idea what that has to do with what I posted but it's interesting at least. I'll respond to the bit that applies to me:

Atheists (science):
- God doesn't exist
- S believes that God doesn't exist
- if God doesn't exist, S (because there is scientific proof that he doesn't exist) would believe that God doesn't exist
- if God does exist, S (because there is scientific proof that he exists) would believe that God exists.

What would constitute "scientific proof" of God's existence? If a big bearded face appeared in the sky, visible to everyone, and said "I am God. I created the universe" would that be proof? No, not of God. It would be proof that there is a big face in the sky.

One will tend to run into big problems when making statements involving the "scientific proof" of something that isn't even "scientifically" defined.

I could say I am an atheist not so much because there is no scientific proof of (the Christian) God, but because the (Christian) definition of God makes no sense to me. Asking me to believe in him is like asking me to believe in a purple Tuesday.

[Letum]

What would constitute "scientific proof" of God's existence? If a big bearded face appeared in the sky, visible to everyone, and said "I am God. I created the universe" would that be proof? No, not of God. It would be proof that there is a big face in the sky.

What would constitute "scientific proof" of onelifecrisis' existence?
If a person appeared at a subsim meet, visible to everyone, and said "I
am onelifecrisis. I created SH3 mods" would that be proof? No, not of
onelifecrisis. It would be proof that there is a person at the subsim meet.

Extraordinary theories like gods may require extraordinary evidence, but
big faces in the sky should be close to extraordinary enough.

Asking me to believe in him is like asking me to believe in a purple Tuesday.

I disagree.
There are plenty of descriptions of gods that are coherent.

[IanC]

I just realised something, we can't use the logic of science in disproving a God.
Because using the logic of science, we shouldn't be here to begin with. Science tells us that nothing can come from nothing (I can't magically make a pencil appear in front of me now), therefore how can the Big Bang have started?
Even a single molecule or whatever is smaller than that, needs to have come from something. So it was impossible for the Big Bang to have started, it's impossible that we're even here now.
My simply point is that not everything can be explained by science. :hmmm:

[antikristuseke]

I just realised something, we can't use the logic of science in disproving a God.
Because using the logic of science, we shouldn't be here to begin with. Science tells us that nothing can come from nothing (I can't magically make a pencil appear in front of me now), therefore how can the Big Bang have started?
Even a single molecule or whatever is smaller than that, needs to have come from something. So it was impossible for the Big Bang to have started, it's impossible that we're even here now.
My simply point is that not everything can be explained by science. :hmmm:

No one is claiming that the big bang came from nothing, if you think that then clearly you do not understand it. The big bang theory explains the expansion of space-time from a singularity, nothing less and nothing more. What was before that, we do not know and maybe we will never know. Scientists as a whole are a group that are not afraid to say "We simply do not know." instead of claiming absolute certainty, unlike religious folk.
Just because science can not explain something does not mean it has a supernatural cause, it simply means we do not know yet.

[NeonSamurai]

I disagree.
There are plenty of descriptions of gods that are coherent.

I dunno, personally I have always thought that human descriptions of deities are far too simplistic. IMHO if such an entity or entities exist, they would have to be far beyond our ability to even conceive of them in any accurate manner.

Lets face it, most human created deities through out our existence have been super versions of ourselves, and our books tend to depict them as being contrary entities that are both kind and loving, and vicious and vengeful in nature. Probably in an attempt to reflect the reality of life on this planet.

I also find the idea of there being a single true religion an absurd concept to be honest. There have been countless belief systems proposed by humanity since its existence. All have had equally devout followers who believe utterly in the truth of their faith, willing to kill and die for their beliefs, and many of them have claimed their god(s) to be the only true gods.

This is why I could never believe in either Christianity or Islam, as their claims are just as unsubstantiated and for me as difficult to believe in as any other religion. Religion is a human creation, and as such is as flawed as anything else we create. This doesn't mean a creator(s) does not exist though, or that spiritual belief is worthless.


Lastly Iceman... I hadn't really wanted to comment on your post as I don't much care for deriding the spiritual beliefs of others, but you left yourself wide open to it by your own criticism. Do you really fail to see the vanity in your own claim? How you are committing the exact same fallacies you accuse others of. Also last I checked one of the key missions of Christianity is the conversion of non believers, ie. selling their version of god.

[IanC]

No one is claiming that the big bang came from nothing, if you think that then clearly you do not understand it. The big bang theory explains the expansion of space-time from a singularity, nothing less and nothing more. What was before that, we do not know and maybe we will never know. Scientists as a whole are a group that are not afraid to say "We simply do not know." instead of claiming absolute certainty, unlike religious folk.
Just because science can not explain something does not mean it has a supernatural cause, it simply means we do not know yet.

Ok fine, but what was that singularity? Whatever your answer is, it couldn't have come from nothing. Science says everything must have a beginning, and that nothing can come from nothing.
And please be clear about my position. I think both the religious and the atheists are, politely put, naive. Like I posted before, the only common sense answer is that we simply don't know.

[IanC]

Just because science can not explain something does not mean it has a supernatural cause, it simply means we do not know yet.

And please go back and read my post again. I never said said it meant supernatural causes. I said it means that not everything can be explained by science.

[Stealth Hunter]

Well, I guess it helps us know more about you.

:salute:

[Letum]

Science says everything must have a beginning, and that nothing can come from nothing.

What has given you that idea?

Take a root around http://origins.asu.edu/ .
You will have a hard time finding a cosmologist that agrees with you.

[karamazovnew]

I've no idea what that has to do with what I posted but it's interesting at least.

What would constitute "scientific proof" of God's existence? If a big bearded face appeared in the sky, visible to everyone, and said "I am God. I created the universe" would that be proof? No, not of God. It would be proof that there is a big face in the sky.

One will tend to run into big problems when making statements involving the "scientific proof" of something that isn't even "scientifically" defined.

I could say I am an atheist not so much because there is no scientific proof of (the Christian) God, but because the (Christian) definition of God makes no sense to me. Asking me to believe in him is like asking me to believe in a purple Tuesday.

Sorry, I usually start saying something but end up with the Chinese Wall. What I meant was that Evolution doesn't contradict Creation and viceversa. By scientific proof I mean any complete theory that can explain Creation.

For example, for centuries it was thought that the world was flat (except for a few crazy greeks). Stars were charted and believed to be gods flying over the flat and infinite earth. Then came the idea that the world was round. Stelar navigation became possible and it's laws were mostly drawn back then. Continents were discovered using a single compas and burning candles. It took more time for people to accept that the world, although round, was moving around the sun. But did this have anything to do with navigation? No. A simple round earth was enough to change history, even though the image was incomplete.

It only took one simple experiment made by Eratosthenes to calculate the radius of the earth with 2 sticks and an hourglass. Yet with all our science we have not ONE proof of God, one single smart experiment to explain Creation. As with the stars themselves, we still see gods flying around on the sky. Believe me, when that proof arrives, you'll notice it :haha:. And as with the above example, it doesn't even need to be a complete one :haha:.

But that doesn't mean that I share the Christian belief about a bearded God. I'm more of a Tolstoi/Dostoievsky believer, a searcher.

[IanC]

What has given you that idea?

Take a root around http://origins.asu.edu/ .
You will have a hard time finding a cosmologist that agrees with you.

If you can give me a more specific link, it would be much appreciated. That looks like a big website. And scientists believe things can magically pop into existence all by itself? :hmmm:

[Letum]

Unfortunately my PC lacks audio ATM, but there should be something of
interest on the topic here:http://thesciencenetwork.org/tags/Big+Bang

It's not the only place with some popular modern cosmology, but it's as good a start as any.

scientists believe things can magically pop into existence all by itself?In short: yes.
There are theories popular amongst physicists at the moment that predict
an abundance of things poping into existence everywhere, constantly for
very small periods of time.

but you don't need a physicist to tell you that if there was ever a state in
which nothing existed, it was not a stable state. The universe is evidence
of that.

[IanC]

Unfortunately my PC lacks audio ATM, but there should be something of
interest on the topic here:http://thesciencenetwork.org/tags/Big+Bang

It's not the only place with some popular modern cosmology, but it's as good a start as any.

In short: yes.
There are theories popular amongst physicists at the moment that predict
an abundance of things poping into existence everywhere, constantly for
very small periods of time.

but you don't need a physicist to tell you that if there was ever a state in
which nothing existed, it was not a stable state. The universe is evidence
of that.

Maybe things can appear out of nowhere, on earth, or even in space. But these places are not 'empty'. Even space has radiation etc... I'm talking about the absolute beginning. Where nothing can feed itself on anything for creation, so to speak. It's all very interesting and way over my head anyways. :doh:

[Skybird]

Regarding an "absolute point of beginning", in our low-dimensional thinking :) this causes always problems. where you define a point of start, you must answer the question: if nothing was before, why did something start then, and where? Where is the ending line? If nothing was before the universe, inside which environment could the universe suddenly take place, then? Why should it even do? An expanding universe, they say- so there is something that is outside the universe? A metaverse? Universes in universes, arranged in metaverses, that form clusters of metaverses organised in even higher hierarchial structures, ad infinitum?

We do not know. and we are trapped inside the patterns and categories of our thinking.Only the language of mathematics allows us to step beyond out limitations - but we cannot be sure that what mathetics show us, can be taken for real, we do not know if what we imagine the abstract statement to be in "reality" really matches "reality" - if we even can imagine a mathematical abstraction at all (and often we cannot).

I myself think that this thinking in terms of beginnings and endings and Big Bangs creates more problems than answers.

Science gives answers including the big bang - that is a variation of the "there was an absolute beginning"-type of thinking. It is a linear thinking, where things move along the arrow of time from the beginning to the end. But as always, science's answer is a theory that tries to arrange thoughts and observations as best as possible in order to make them cooperating and corresponding in the best way we can currently see. It is no final answer. I personally find the idea that there was nothing and then there was all and everything unfolding by just a big BANG!, to be as unsatisfying as the imganination that a god has created it all. It causes more questions than it seems to answer.

There are things, to which the answers we simply do not know. And imagining that our fantasies can serve as an answer, does not change the fact that we still do not know.

What is so difficult in saying these simple words: We/I do not know? We are aware of a lack in knowledge, that means. And this already influences us, changes us, gives orientation to our ambitions and motivations. To admit a lacking knowledge is nothing negative at all. and in our little sphere of existence, Newton's physics still remain valid and help us to master the challenges of our veryday lives. ;)

In the end, we do not even know for sure if all those galaxies our telescopes showing us by looking back in time, are real, or not, and the image is that of past times anyway, we do not know what the present looks like. And if all the universe our telescopes show us when looking beyond our galaxy, would already no longer exist in this very moment we are living in - we would not know.

That puts some things into relation, doesn't it.

Seen that way that cup of tea on my table, slowly becoming too cold to be enjoyable anymore, is a million times more imprtant to be adressed than all science in the world. Because it could very well be the last cup of tea i will ever have. If there is one thing I really have learned about life, than this: the next moment is completely uncertain, we do not know what life will bring us in the next year, the next day, even the next minute. the only certainty we have is, that one day it all will end for us, that one day we will die, that our stay in this existence comes to an ultimate, undisputable, non-negotiable end. whether there is something after death, or before birth, is speculation. we do not know. This absolute certainty makes this information the most certain and precious knowledge we have. And the only real knowledge we have, too.

All we can do is living on and trying to be ready for what we can foresee. And actually such a life - already is very much.


1

The One Essence that could be known,
Is not the essence of the Unknowable.
The idea that could be imagined,
Is not the image of the Eternal.
Nameless is the all-One, is inner Essence.
Known by names is the all-Many, is outer form.
Resting without desires, means to reach the invisible inside.
Acting with desires, means to stay by the limited outside.
The all-One and the all-Many are of the same origin,
Different only in appearance and in name.
What they have in common is the wonder of being.
The secret of this wonder
Is the gate to true understanding.



2

One who thinks: Beauty, by that causes: Ugliness.
One who thinks: Good, by that causes: Evil.
Being and Non-Being are contingent upon each other.
Difficult and Easy are contingent upon each other.
High and Low are contingent upon each other.
Loud and Quiet are contingent upon each other.
Now and Then are contingent upon each other.

Therefore the wise man:
He let’s himself cause, without wanting to do,
And lives, without wanting to name the many things.
Innumerable forms rise from the Void,
But he lets them, and does not attach himself to them.
Creating, without wanting to possess,
Living, without clinging to life,
Causing, without dwelling on it.
Because he does not attach himself to it,
He suffers no loss.

[Snestorm]

I still have to remain officialy neutral as I don't accept Creationism or Evolutionism as being fact. However, as far as this debate goes, the evolutionists have the upper hand. Nobody on the evolutionist side has tryed to push their beliefs as hard fact. The creationist side can't make this claim.

My personal perspective is that religion is a way of uniting and controling people.

What is the difference between a religion and a cult?
The number of believers, and nothing more.
Yesterday's cult is todays religion.
Yesterday's religion is todays cult or mytholigy.

"Gee, what a co-insidence" that many stories of the bible are copies of stories from the old gods and godesses (Odin, Frigg, Freja, Tyr, osv.).

How many people have been killed "in the name of god"???

I find the theory of evolution to be equaly as absurd BUT, nobody here has tryed to claim it as irrefutable fact. There lies a huge difference.

[AngusJS]

yet you are living by faith already....just your faith holds no particuliar hope of any kind of any real future. Your faith tells you, your born,you die, and and that's the finite end.Evolution != atheism. And atheists don't have faith, they just (usually) require that claims be backed up by evidence or reason, crazy idea, I know.

Most intrepretations of the bible are so clinical and sanitary that most cannot not get to the deeper understanding of what is spoken....it is very clear to one who can hear.Do we know more about the universe than the authors of the bible did, or do we know less?

If something was written in extremely problematic texts compiled by a bunch of ignorant men 3000 years ago, does that mean it must be true? Are all those other ancient holy books that make contradictory claims true as well?

[antikristuseke]

Ok fine, but what was that singularity? Whatever your answer is, it couldn't have come from nothing. Science says everything must have a beginning, and that nothing can come from nothing.
And please be clear about my position. I think both the religious and the atheists are, politely put, naive. Like I posted before, the only common sense answer is that we simply don't know.

And scientists share your opinion, we simply do not know. Besides atheists don't make a claim that t came from nothing, atheism is simply a lack of faith in a god or gods, nothing more and nothing less.

[AngusJS]

Since there is no scientific proof that God doesn't exist, an atheist cannot yet claim knowledge of this fact.It's a good thing then that so few atheists actually make that claim.

[Morts]

Evolution != atheism
errr.....no ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theistic_evolution

[onelifecrisis]

errr.....no ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theistic_evolution

!= means "is not equal to"

[Morts]

!= means "is not equal to"
aaah, i see :up:
i figured it was just a typo

[Stealth Hunter]

And scientists share your opinion, we simply do not know. Besides atheists don't make a claim that t came from nothing, atheism is simply a lack of faith in a god or gods, nothing more and nothing less.

Well I should correct a few things on this matter, between you Anti and Iceman. First, true singularities do not exist. It's simply a mathematical term used to describe where general relativity and quantum mechanics, to put it bluntly, go bats*** insane together. This isn't because the math behind them is flawed; it's because we reach states of infinity, with what is generally regarded as the universe's "birthpoint" marking a finite beginning- because the universe will end eventually even though it's infinitely expanding.

One of the things the LHC is hoping to solve on a tiny scale is what it was like after the Big Bang, and during it. Little is known of the Planck Epoch, in terms of observable evidence anyway. Again, it's mostly based on math and hypotheses. But the LHC offers us a chance to know, or at least start to journey to, the answer to the ultimate questions about reality- our very universe's origin itself.

To be frank, if the String Theory, Multiverse Theory, and Superstring Theory are all correct, then we're just one universe in an endless existence of other universes (that literally are infinite in number). It's possible our universe exists within a larger universe, and that universe within an even larger one; etc.- for an infinite number. And vice versa with smaller universes existing within our own universe. An infinite number therein could exist on smaller and larger scales. This gets into plausible worlds and the like, though.

Theoretically, it's possible and quite likely there exists a universe where you and I are made out of chocolate, the sky's yellow, and we breath methane. Even universes where we don't exist.

Consider, if you will, a movement you make. Let's say here, you take two steps backwards and four steps to the right. There exists a universe where you took two steps forward, and four steps left. And a universe where you took two steps to the right and four steps to the left. Etc. With the movement possibilities other dimensions, like the fourth, fifth, sixth, etc., open up, there's an infinite number of movements you could make. Assuming that any one of the universes that exists within these dimensions contains you. Well- a version of you anyway. Again, there's places where you don't even exist.

Think about that for a moment. The sheer size of this universe that we've observed with telescopes and imaging devices is impossible for our fragile minds to comprehend, but even so we know from it that we're small. We can rationalize it by saying that magical beings created us to make ourselves comfortable and feel special in the thought that there is purpose to it all (this is embedded in our nature), but the reality, logical, observable, and philosophical reality, is that we're meaningless. Something less than meaningless really. Multiply that by infinity, and you amount to less than nothing. Sounds weird, but then again, existence and reality normally are weird. For good and ill.

There's no one question we could ask that could possibly answer all the questions we have about existence; what does it look like beyond this universe, what's beyond the infinity of the dimensions and universes, how did all this come to be, etc. And there's no one answer that could possibly explain all of it. Even so- we'd never be able to understand. That's not cliched or even merely a matter of opinion; the simple fact of the matter is that there are some things too big and complicated for the brain to comprehend- particularly when you're dealing with the very existence of it, and of what it exists in.

It's scary, to say the least. I personally will always agree with Lovecraft:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

[Skybird]

Stealth Hunter,

time to add an element of poetry.

http://ioannis.virtualcomposer2000.com/optics/indra.html

You probably have heared of it, but nevertheless - it is a nice metaphor, or image. I always saw beauty in it.

[Stealth Hunter]

Stealth Hunter,

time to add an element of poetry.

http://ioannis.virtualcomposer2000.com/optics/indra.html

You probably have heared of it, but nevertheless - it is a nice metaphor, or image. I always saw beauty in it.

That's pretty damn awesome.:o

[Tribesman]

And there's no one answer that could possibly explain all of it.
What about 42?

[Morts]

What about 42?
Win

[sharkbit]

What about 42?

LOL :haha:

I was wondering if that would appear in this discussion.
:)

[Fish]

What has given you that idea?

Take a root around http://origins.asu.edu/ .
You will have a hard time finding a cosmologist that agrees with you.

I'm missing Dr. Kent Hovind in the Advisory Panel.;)

[Biggles]

What about 42?

Beat me to it, damn you!:O:

[Skybird]

http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/4921/sciencevscreationism.png (http://img215.imageshack.us/i/sciencevscreationism.png/)

http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/310/teachcontroveryevolutio.jpg (http://img526.imageshack.us/i/teachcontroveryevolutio.jpg/)

http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/32/creationismjobs.gif (http://img192.imageshack.us/i/creationismjobs.gif/)

[antikristuseke]

I'm missing Dr. Kent Hovind in the Advisory Panel.;)

He has about as much right to claim a doctorate as I do.

[Stealth Hunter]

Of course, we can never forget Banana Man, Ray Comfort:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z-OLG0KyR4

Your ignorance is so appalling, sir, that you deserve to be shot. No- not just for your ignorance, but for your intentional and failed dishonesty.

[antikristuseke]

Let us not forget peanut butter man.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZFG5PKw504

[NeonSamurai]

Of course, we can never forget Banana Man, Ray Comfort:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z-OLG0KyR4

Your ignorance is so appalling, sir, that you deserve to be shot. No- not just for your ignorance, but for your intentional and failed dishonesty.

Let us not forget peanut butter man.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZFG5PKw504


Ok now my head hurts :doh:

[jimbob]

Sorry but t.l.d.r.

Im not into religion.

Im not too smart to be a scientist.

With that said, Heil Xenu!

It is hard to see/understand/believe how from nothingess something suddenly exploded and some time later, here I type.

But mostly I have issues with religion/cults, being it whatever of sort.
And there are many.

I got a cure, vaccine of sorts for it but nobody wants to hear it. ;)

So hear goes, read and weep:

Just for starters, hows about we just teach different religions in schools for kids.
The catch is, one can not "join" a cult or whatever before adulthood.
No forcing it by parent's or anything. Sort of like the thing with booze.
That would be a good start IMO.

Being a good folks, morals could surely be thought without hanging into bibles or what have we.

So there.




And don't even get me started on $cientology.
:haha:


So there, Im selling the point of "I don't know", The Ultimate Doubt.

But I still think the science is the way to go from now on.


Folks can believe whatever they want.
Im just wishing they don't start forcing it down my throat.
Especially as The Ultimate Thruth.

Live and let live.

:)

[Fish]

He has about as much right to claim a doctorate as I do.

His doctoral dissertation.:yawn:


Young-earth creationist Kent E. Hovind's doctoral dissertation.
"Hello, my name is Kent Hovind. I am a creation/science evangelist. I live in Pensacola, Florida. I have been a high school science teacher since 1976. I've been very active in the creation/evolution controversy for quite some time."
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Young-earth_creationist_Kent_Hovind's_doctoral_dissertat ion

[vedrand]

Creationism relies on a literal interpretaion of the bible about the nature of the planet and a solid belief that it is infallible.
Since it is very easy to show the bible is wrong then creationism makes no sense......end of topic.

:up::up::up:

[August]

This very cool video pretty much shows that creationist theory can't be as simple as that:

The Known Universe by the American Museum of Natural History:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U

[Biggles]

This very cool video pretty much shows that creationist theory can't be as simple as that:

The Known Universe by the American Museum of Natural History:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U

The video was very cool indeed (!), but can you develop your argument?:DL

[Nicolas]

Throw a dice.

i was talking about the topic...
This world, and animlas, plants, couldnt exist the way it is by random chance. C'mon, you write so smart. If someone disarm a tv and throw it in a box, add or substract millions of components shake it for 1000 billion years, when it will get functional again? thats my point.

if you give more than a dime to what the bible says, Romans 1:18 talk about:

From heaven God shows how angry he is with all the wicked and evil things that sinful people do to crush the truth. 19They know everything that can be known about God, because God has shown it all to them. 20God's eternal power and character cannot be seen. But from the beginning of creation, God has shown what these are like by all he has made. That's why those people don't have any excuse. 21They know about God, but they don't honor him or even thank him. Their thoughts are useless, and their stupid minds are in the dark. 22They claim to be wise, but they are fools. 23They don't worship the glorious and eternal God. Instead, they worship idols that are made to look like humans who cannot live forever, and like birds, animals, and reptiles.
24So God let these people go their own way. They did what they wanted to do, and their filthy thoughts made them do shameful things with their bodies. 25They gave up the truth about God for a lie, and they worshiped God's creation instead of God, who will be praised forever. Amen.

[Nicolas]

About natural selection, who select a better way to evolve? if there is some sort of thing that do natural design, that thing is wiser and smarter than ourselves.

An animal has a mutation, that mutation, results to be useful, the 'natural selection', the will to live or i dont know decides that this thing must be part of the genoma, so the next generation will have it, but no... to make a nice change to evolve, it will need a lot of small error or random chances, who decides that 1000 little random chances to put them together and finish with a 'evolution'.

I'm using logic, instead of participate in the disscussion, i could talk about God himself, but that preaching right, and is not welcome? or yes?.

[Morts]

you have yet to proove that evolution doesnt take place nicolas,
and quoting the bibles prooves nothing

[Skybird]

About natural selection, who select a better way to evolve? if there is some sort of thing that do natural design, that thing is wiser and smarter than ourselves.

An animal has a mutation, that mutation, results to be useful, the 'natural selection', the will to live or i dont know decides that this thing must be part of the genoma, so the next generation will have it, but no... to make a nice change to evolve, it will need a lot of small error or random chances, who decides that 1000 little random chances to put them together and finish with a 'evolution'.

I'm using logic, instead of participate in the disscussion, i could talk about God himself, but that preaching right, and is not welcome? or yes?.

That's a very big "if". But by merely mentioning it you then continue by taking it as granted. That has nothing to do with "logic", but means taking man-made hear-say as proven fact.

And you probably assume right: just preaching about gods is not welcomed by not so few people around here, and you can expect an angry debate and a thread probably going up in flames (wouldn't be the first one). You are free to believe whatever you want, most people here would not care or wish that they must not care or even take notice - as long as you keep it where it belongs: in your private sphere. the relation between yourself and the object of your belief is an intimate one and thus a private concern of yours, so keep it private, then. If you think you must bestow the world with what you just believe, and go public over it, expect to take Flak from people not sharing your beliefs. that's how the world goes: every action has reaction and whatever force you inflict, returns. ;)

As much as evolution is concerned, it is a theory that for the most brings known observations of ours into a better model than other theories we tested. To do so - forming theories oin the basis of making best use of what we already know - is the essence of science. Religion claims that questions are not needed since it holds all the ultimate answers. Science asks questions and checks the answers again and again, sometimes chnaging themtherefore, admitting that it does not hold ultimate truths. Religious dogma and scientific theory are totally exclusive to each other, they are almost antagonistic. If you want to abolish the theory of evolution, you must come up with a better model that brings the elements of our knowledge so far into better relation to each other, or you have to prove that the mechanisms of life developing as described by the theory of evolution, is wrong for this and that reason that can be checked, verified and replicated.

Just believing something - is not good enough to get any of these jobs done. Proof, please! ;)

[Nicolas]

:up::up::up:

Who creates the creationism like you described?
For believers the bible and God is enough to accept that He created the universe. The bible says is bad for a man the lack of science. It's not right to put facts and science away. God and science are a perfect match; he knew how to create an universe, and your soul...

[Nicolas]

You want proof? a big one?
God says that he will not reject you if you come to him.
You need to do it with humility.
Have faith and ask sincerely to him that you really need to know if he exist, that you are unsure. That you invite him to talk with you, to show to you, you wont hear him, or see things, the eye to see God is in the spirit.
Jesus said that if you knock the door the door will open.

If i can't talk this, please sorry but this topic is totally useless.

[Nicolas]

Yes, it's man saying things, that i talked, only on others and my head.
It's like a theory... a theory can be abolished you said...

[Nicolas]

Qouting your theory prooves nothing... i want proof... :D scientific prooves
of the creation of the universe by itself, and the existence of smart people only because a random thing.
you have yet to proove that evolution doesnt take place nicolas,
and quoting the bibles prooves nothing

[Nicolas]

That's a very big "if". But by merely mentioning it you then continue by taking it as granted. That has nothing to do with "logic", but means taking man-made hear-say as proven fact.

No no, I tried to draw a picture with the IF. a picture of what is the theory of the evolution, as i read so far it is.

Sorry the english.

[NeonSamurai]

i was talking about the topic...
This world, and animlas, plants, couldnt exist the way it is by random chance. C'mon, you write so smart. If someone disarm a tv and throw it in a box, add or substract millions of components shake it for 1000 billion years, when it will get functional again? thats my point.

I wondered when someone would pull out the classic watchmaker straw man argument. Here are 2 videos to counter.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6413987104216231786#
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcAq9bmCeR0

[Skybird]

You want proof? a big one?
God says that he will not reject you if you come to him.
You need to do it with humility.
Have faith and ask sincerely to him that you really need to know if he exist, that you are unsure. That you invite him to talk with you, to show to you, you wont hear him, or see things, the eye to see God is in the spirit.
Jesus said that if you knock the door the door will open.

That is no proof at all, Nicolas. it's only what you believe. You could as well believe that in reality the grass is blue and the sky is green. Claiming that, is one thing. Proving it - is something different. ;)

http://img693.imageshack.us/img693/6802/breakthecycle.jpg (http://img693.imageshack.us/i/breakthecycle.jpg/)

If i can't talk this, please sorry but this topic is totally useless.
It's not because of you, but you are nevertheless right: this topic was useless from the beginning on. And some of us already indicated that on the very first page.

Religious belief is dogma, and dogmas are not to be critically questioned and analysed, but are to be believed only, and claim to be the ultimate truth that must not be tested and checked and verified at all.

Science means theory that tries to arrange observations we make in such a way that they make the best sense to our thinking and arrange the totality of our observations in such a way that the contradictions between various observations are brought to the possible minimum, and so that options for further examination and exploration and asking new questions to increase our understanding get created. Different to religious dogma, it does not claim to know the final, the last, the ultimate answers, but gives temporary answers only that get constantly analysed, checked, and changed. Note that theory that freezes in dogmatism, brings the scientific process to a halt, and then start to look a lot like religion, too. Dogmatism and theory do not coexist well. Openness and scepticism are two key ingredients of science. But for organised, and especially theistic, religion, they are lethal enemies.

Sometimes a theory becomes quite influential, and becomes quite resistent to change, because it answers things quite well accoridng to all information we so far have gained. We then call it a paradigm. Theories are models that change fast. Paradigms are schools that change slowly. Dogmas don't see a need for change at all.

You may believe that you know, when you believe in what religion tells you. But believing is not knowing. When believing that you know, indeed you only believe exclusively - but you don't know anything as a matter of fact. that's why it is useless to quote the bible or any other religious scripture to refer to an assumed deity in order to prove your point. It is no proof for the claims of religion at all. It's just: claims of something unproven, unchecked, that is unavaílable to analysis anyway.

[Sailor Steve]

Well said, Mr. Bird.

[Skybird]

Steve,

why don't we just restart again after that communication meltdown recently that neither you nor me intended anyway, but that just took place like sh!t sometimes happens - we cannot undo it now?! I know we see things totally different on that event, and we will not reach an agreeing opinion on who did what and why - but maybe we could agree to let it be a closed file, bypass it and leave it behind? It was the first time ever that we banged heads. And for what?

In the end I regret that we got so hot over something that most likely simply was not worth it to become so angry - not if considering that I really respect your presence on this board very much, and that just short time before we have had very friendly and personal PMs exchanged.

Let's bury the hatchet and move on. ;) What you say?

[Sailor Steve]

NO! I HATE YOU!:p2:

If I hadn't already put it behind me I wouldn't have responded as I did above.

Truth is I was never angry in that thread, just confused. I want to keep arguing about it now, simply because I don't think it was resolved. But that's for PMs, or for not at all.

It's cool.:sunny:

[Skybird]

:shucks: Next drinks on me.:salute:

But I think keeping on to argue about it would just add to the confusion that finally brought us to where we ended. Already in that thread I had lost contact in the end, and with the huge number of quoted replies in every reply it had become incredibly time-consuming if one would adress all that on a one-ba-one basis. It's easily the most complex pile-up of such a scattered thread I have ever been engaged in. At least that's how it looked from my end.

Anyhow, done is done, let's move on.

[Tribesman]

Jesus said that if you knock the door the door will open.

That was before doorbells evolved